Tue, Feb 17, 2004 page8

• English is a blight on young kids

  • By Chen Shu-chin 陳淑琴
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  The Ministry of Education recently announced that kindergartens and nursery schools will be prohibited from offering instruction solely in English. Working in the field of early-childhood education, I have always been hesitant to support foreign-language education for preschoolers -- especially the "all-English" education offered in certain local schools. A decade ago, early-childhood education circles strove to resist the inappropriate teaching of Chinese characters and the Mandarin phonetic system ("bopomofo"). Today, however, what we face is rampant English teaching among very young children, a development that is now almost completely out of control.

  No one would completely oppose preschoolers learning English, and most agree that learning a foreign language can

  be a valuable part of the wider language-learning experience. However, with the current English-learning fever that is infecting the country, we see preschool operators mechanically drilling slogans and songs into their students in complete disregard of the physical and cognitive developmental needs of very young children -- just so that parents can see prompt results. This has crowded out many basic learning activities essential during the early-childhood learning stage, and this seriously affects the normal development and learning ability of very young children.

  In addition, most of the foreign teachers employed by preschools are not qualified to teach. They seldom have a background in education, let alone professional knowledge or proven ability in English teaching for young children. Of those who have a little language-teaching ability, most know nothing about early-childhood development and are unable to provide suitable instruction and life guidance to the children in their care.

  There is a comprehensive overemphasis on foreign language learning during early childhood in this country, and it impacts on the participants in five ways.

  First, the educational curriculum suffers because the primary goals of early-childhood education have gradually been blurred, transformed, and even replaced by the trend toward learning English.

  Second, bona fide preschools suffer because it's more troublesome for them to recruit, train, communicate with and manage foreign teachers, leading to a dilemma pitting student recruitment against the maintenance of professionalism in early-childhood education.

  Third, teachers suffer because their professionalism is not valued by schools and they are not respected by parents.

  Fourth, parents suffer because their financial burden increases, leading to an unequal distribution of educational resources, unrealistic expectations toward early-childhood English learning and an overemphasis on results.

  Fifth, very young children suffer because the stages of early-childhood development are violated, placing more pressure upon the children to learn English while sacrificing other important developmental tasks.

  The community and the nation will pay a considerable price for this mistake. If our preschoolers and older children receive a basic education that excessively engages foreign languages and cultures, and are taught that foreign languages are more important than native ones, I do not know how they will be able to come to adequately learn their own languages and recognize their own cultures.

  But the impact of this superstitious Taiwanese zeal for early-childhood English learning is far greater than this. Although the global trend of declining birthrates is a major headache for preschool commercial interests, the schools also realize that most of the pressure on them comes from competition from a large number of cram schools. Thus, "all-English" or "international" schools operate under the name of short-term language cram schools in order to avoid basic administrative requirements for preschools. But these schools are still run like kindergartens and nursery schools, illegally recruiting preschool students for full-time courses. In terms of teaching staff, curriculum and teaching equipment, not to mention fire safety measures, fee structure and management, none of them is qualified to operate a preschool.

  The teaching mode of these "schools," which gives more weight to "outcome" than process, lags behind current early-childhood teaching methodologies by at least 30 years. There are no picture books or learning corners inside their classrooms, let alone recreational materials or toys. There are only desks, chairs, whiteboards, textbooks and homework books (with imported or popular teaching materials, perhaps), with a foreign or local language teacher, and maybe a preschool teacher who is not competent to teach in proper institutions. Yet, just by looking at the timetables, parents will probably be satisfied by a curriculum with courses covering various "talents."

  Based on my three-year involvement in an evaluation of public and private kindergartens and nursery schools, I feel deeply about the overall decline in quality of Taiwan's early-childhood education. However, parents still prefer all-English preschools without knowing the truth behind what is going on, while effective government administration is absent. As a result, the aura of all-English courses has continued to attract a large number of preschoolers. Due to the dominance of language cram schools, the shrinking preschool market will barely be able to sustain itself. Many legal preschools are, therefore, forced to abandon their principles and join the battle of English instruction to survive.

  Have you heard a saying doing the rounds? It's okay for kids not to learn English, but preschools must teach it to survive.

  In this bloody battle of preschool English instruction, the only winners are English cram-school operators. But for everyone else -- preschools, teachers, parents, very young children and the community as a whole -- overemphasis of foreign languages and cultures will result in bitter defeat.

  Chen Shu-chin is chairwoman of the department of early childhood education at National Taichung Teachers College.

  TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG

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