SENDING children early to school is beneficial as they start learning at a younger age and adopt things fast. Nowadays parents normally send their children to school at the age of three or four years.

Reasons for this are the various levels — playgroup, nursery, prep and so on. Owing to this, parents need to send their children to school at such a young age so they can cover all these levels easily with their age. The other reason for sending children to school at a young age is that parents are busy in their professional pursuits and other tasks. So they find it as a solution to send their children to school at a very young age.

For this, parents force their children to go to school. They even beat children and treat them harshly if they refuse to go to school. Children like to engage in games instead of having a bag full of books and sitting in a classroom for four to five hours.

They don’t get the love and care that a child needs because a teacher cannot deal all students in class with affection. That is the reason most children are afraid of going to school.

However, they go to school only on their parents’ insistence. As a result, these children become stubborn and rude, and start misbehaving. Parents instead of realising the reason behind their child’s bad behavior become stricter and treat the child more harshly.

This causes negative psychological effects on the child. Gradually as the child grows, he or she becomes ruder and it creates a gulf between the child and parents. We need to stop sending our children to school at such a young age. We can teach them at home.

More importantly, we should start a campaign to abolish the early school levels such as playgroup, nursery, and prep. There should be only one level so parents do not have to send their children to school at early age.

Naheed Jahan
Islamabad

Published in Dawn, April 23rd, 2020