The importance of education in young children is indubitable. Educators know that young children have a critical need for education because the life of a young child determines their adulthood and the influence they are bound to have on society. Despite our unanimity on the importance of education in young children, the debate is rife on the methodologies to use and resources to invest in the education of these children. This has led to a society where children are seriously deprived of education. This essay highlights the importance of education in young children and the role of society in ensuring that young children get the best out of education.
The benefits of educating young children touch on all realms of life. Early childhood education has a substantial contribution to fluency, the building of social skills; especially communication skills, the building of personal qualities like self-esteem and confidence. Children’s characteristic retention power necessitates their acquisition of these skills at their age. For instance, if a child becomes fluent at the age of four years, it will take physical disability of body parts related to speech to deprive him/her of that essential skill. On the other hand, if a child reaches eight years with pronunciation problems, it will be very difficult to train the child to overcome this problem. In the same way, people who exhibit a high level of intelligence at a tender age grow to be great scholars or become very successful in their adult life (Frank, 2009, p. 1).
The acquisition of the values stated above is dependent on the policies related to the education of young children as well as the programs that educators put in place for teaching young children. For instance, to develop fluency in children, their teachers must put a lot of emphasis on phonemics and phonics. The school environment also helps the child to acquire many social skills. As a matter of fact, the skills children acquire in school may be very difficult to acquire in other environments. Consider the skills in developing personal relationships for example. When children are at home, they do not have a favorable environment for building skills in personal relationships. In most cases, their family members are older than them and thus their relationships are characterized by compromise, understanding, and love. They, therefore, do not have much to learn since challenges are limited in this setting. It is therefore important to consider the contribution of the learning environment before getting excited by technology which may lead to some parents tying their children in lonely educational tethers (Frank, 2009, p. 1).
It is the responsibility of society to ensure that children get the early intellectual development they deserve. We should ask ourselves how we can positively impact the education of these children and thus develop appropriate practices and policies that improve the quality of education offered to young children in different cultures and contexts. We should also appreciate the dynamic nature of the society we are living in today and model education are given to young children to meet contemporary education needs. For instance, nowadays, the education given to children will be incomplete without technology-related lessons. In conclusion, the education given to children should be given the importance it deserves since children will form tomorrow’s society. Governments should lay down structures to ensure that each child gets quality early education.
Reference
Frank, S. Early Childhood Education. 2010. Web.