Children need more attention after school

Aravinda HETTIARACHCHI

Vindhya Wijegunewardene the founder of Young Explorer Institution has been working in the mobile telecommunication industry for the past 10 years and has been involved in training and grooming young executives on leadership and service excellence.

Her own investigation on lack of interpersonal skills, creativity and even out of the box thinking due to the stressful academic background of today’s young generation motivated her to focus on children. She found that children are subjected to an unbalanced childhood with the same academic over-determination in life and minimal focus on developing their exposure to sports, art, literature and hobbies. She spoke to Daily News on this regard.

“School children today have a very stressful life. I have a six year old son. I see the amount of work they do. If he misses one day at school, he has to complete three to four pages in each book. Facing every single term test is a major mission, which parents also get involved in. Most of them force kids to focus more on the academic side. Majority of their opinion is that the kids should be more academically advanced rather than any other aspect of personality development.

Most of our children can not even have an eye-to-eye conversation. They are not confident enough to talk in public either. This negative behaviour is a result of only focusing on the academic aspect. “We propose that our kids need overall balance in life. A child should be a complete product. Our children should have exposure to our literature, art and heritage,” explained Vindhya Wijegunewardene. She reiterated that, as Sri Lankans, we should be proud of our tradition, culture, art and literature. Sadly the current education system has sidelined them.

Kids come straight after school to the Young Explorer Institution. They try to help finish their homework soon. Then they introduce their own programmes of culture and education; arts and crafts, music, dance and theatre. “Our concept is that these activities should be enjoyed without the expectation of certificates or sitting for exams. It is a constructive time to play, enjoy and learn, thereby indirectly removing stress,” said Vindhya Wijegunewardene. “We, at the end of the day, return a happy child who has learned and enjoyed life and can spend some quality time with the parents. This is how we try to balance both the academic and recreative aspects.

The centre has also included hobbies in their line of activities. “Most children don’t know what a hobby is. We used to have lot of pen pals and get to know about other countries and their cultures. Today there is email and other ways that makes use of the Internet to communicate with people in other countries without writing to them.” The centre has introduced a Hobby Club, Wild Life programmes, Nature Club and aesthetic activities.

It is a balanced support system for the children with hobbies, environmental activities and community service. Children realize their responsibility towards the community and society. Present education system focuses only on studies. Parents push children towards that sole goal and none of them know that they have to play a role as a proper citizen rather than migrating to another country.

“Most of them therefore have an aim of finishing the primary education soon and go overseas. We should give our children the responsibility that they have a role in their own in this local society,” explained Vindhya Wijegunewardene.

Children are loaded with homework on Mondays and we only have one extra programme the Drama and Theatre activities on that day for we have to balance time for their homework. All the other programmes such as Hobby Club, library usage, community service development project commence from Tuesday.

Once a month, the children are taken outdoors; to the museum or the zoo, or the Independence Square. “If you take the children to the Independence Square they can even admire those lions. The place we choose will surely depend on the children’s activities. Kids always remember these things when they grow up. We still remember how we used to climb trees while we were kids. Through this project, we want children to have a memorable childhood.

The teachers of the institution share the sentiment that children today have a too much of academic study. They have decided to introduce preliminary lessons so that the kids are better prepared when they go to school the next day. This will give them extra confidence. “We don’t make it a lesson, but do it in a subtle way that the activities we conduct reflect their lessons and therefore affects the child subconsciously,” explained Vindhya Wijegunewardene.

They also have a child psychiatrist named Dr Kumaranayake. It started with the parent’s forum on a monthly basis with the purpose of giving proper emotional support to the children through parents. There is also a monitoring process that takes place with the use of their enrolment form, in which parents can enclose anything related to their children’s emotional imbalance. “If a child needs separate attention, we have programmes for special children.”

The teachers with their friendly countenance sit with the children afterschool, ask them about their day, what activities they engaged in, how many friends were there at school.

These are the things that children long to tell their parents. However such discussions rarely take place, in the case of working parents. “We have one teacher who acts in the capacity of a counsellor. In addition to talking to them, she also conducts yoga sessions.

“If you give lots of affection to children, they grow up with lots of valuable emotions.” This will surely help them to understand other’s feelings and work properly in any difficult situation.