30 August - 5 September 2001
Issue No.549
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 30 August - 5 September 2001 Issue No.549 |
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Plain talk
Inside every grown up, however old he may be, exists, somewhere, a child. I was not surprised, therefore, to detect, among the dozen English language publications, newspapers and magazines an interesting item in the London Independent entitled "The Independent Summer School." It advises parents on what to do with their children during the summer vacation.
I was particularly drawn to this programme because it coincided with Mrs Mubarak's call to parents to read with their children. I was happy to support this programme because it stressed the word "read" instead of "watch."
I remain a great believer in books. I simply love the smell of a newly published book, which greets me with open arms, or to be more precise, open pages. When you read a book you almost embrace it, and when you put it aside, to have a drink or to answer the telephone, you almost apologise to -- I was about to say "him," but let it be "it."
Anyway, let me go back to my main subject. The title "Summer School" may put off the young. After all, who wants school during the holiday, having just finished formal classes. But this is a different kind of school. It has no classrooms or desks, no bells to sound the end of the class. It is a school that offers "fun, freedom and flexibility." According to the introductory article, the school is based on a few self-evident truths. Let me quote them. First: nothing leads a child to educational success so surely as warm, detailed parental support. Second: nothing cements a parent-child relationship so firmly as shared learning. Third (but not least) few things place such relationships under so much strain as the long, under- occupied weeks of the summer holidays.
This summer school offers families with school age children a rare opportunity to fill some of the educational gaps that tend to be overlooked by today's result-obsessed curriculum, and to enjoy doing so. The aim of this six day course is simply to supply the raw material to help keep young and older minds rewardingly active. The course covers English, modern languages, science, humanities, maths and the art of creativity. So far four subjects have been published and the series is still running.
Undoubtedly parents and children rarely have enough energy to take much pleasure from homework during the school year. They very rarely spend any time together. The child locks him- or herself up and pores over textbooks. This is why those six lessons give an opportunity for parents and children to get to know one another again and "to join forces in the quest for educational fulfillment."
Of course this "Summer School" is tailored to English families. For instance it starts with English and it offers a few word games that help to enrich the child's -- and in the process as well the parents' -- vocabulary. The games aim at building word skills and they involve the whole family. I still remember playing such games as "I spy with my little eye something beginning with ..." and how all the children competed with each other to find words beginning with the letters pronounced. At the time we looked at it as a game, a pastime. For younger children learning English can come through finding sets of letters in sign posts, billboards, bus tickets, names on packages. Anything with words can be a means of learning. Getting the child to recognise letters is the first step to learning English.
Going through the three lessons published so far, I could see how learning can be fun. Day three deals with science and starts with the assumption that children are natural scientists. According to the chief executive of the Association for Science Education, children are born scientists. Science, he says, is an articulation of their natural curiosity and thus "we need to encourage that curiosity." The course offers simple ways of seeing a rainbow and for making a car out of two matchboxes, drinking straw, paper, four identical buttons and glue.
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