agneskirkwood

So all the kids are due back at school. I'll bet all mothers will breath a sigh of relief when they do go back. My great grandson starts school next week for the first time. It doesn't seem two minutes since he was born, but one thing's for sure, he's ready for school, his brain's like a sponge and wants to know everything about everything. Him going to school reminds me of something I wrote about ten years ago;

On visiting my son, I walked with him as he took my granddaughter to school. Being her first year she was excited to show me her classroom. We hung her coat on the peg with her name on, and proceeded to her classroom. A soon as we walked through the door, she ran to a seat at a row of small computers especially for children. The cheery atmosphere showed all the infants were excited and glad to be there. As I looked around the class room I understood why, and couldn’t help but compare it to the forties when I first attended school.

Gone were the desks and chairs in rows, replaced by a long table and chairs situated as if waiting to be set for a wedding. No rough floorboards full of splinters from constant shuffling of chairs in and out of desks, instead, a colourful carpet covered the floor making the room look homely. Inset lights shone from the white ceiling, where as in my classroom the ceiling was painted dark cream; probably six shades lighter at one time, and high enough to hold another storey above. The lights that dangled above us had thick twisted cable that looked like heavy rope, and probably needed an extension ladder to clean them.

A small wooden kitchen suitable for five year olds stood in the corner of the room, complete with pots, pans, fruit, vegetables, and foods, all made from plastic. No sign of the old school blackboard which was a dominant item in every classroom for over a hundred years, it had been replaced with a shiny white plastic board which used felt tip pens instead of chalk. The classroom walls were a mass of colour from the children’s drawings and paintings. A list of every child’s name hung on the wall with stars in gold and silver stuck on various names. The sound of happy children brought music to my ears as they chatted whilst working in little groups doing different things. Some of the children played games on the computers, some were busy in the little kitchen cooking and cleaning. The rest were around the large table busy painting, drawing, or building models from all sorts of packaging. The teacher moved among them keeping an eye on what they were doing. Every child looked happy and content, and glad to be there. As for the kids in my class were frightened to even whisper. The whole class sat at our desks in complete silence whilst the teacher was talking. This in my opinion led to boredom and daydreams, which caused some of us to nod off. Consequently when the teacher noticed, she’d keep talking as she crept up to the sleeping pupil with the eyes of the whole class following her, then, the old ruler came crashing down on the culprits knuckles. Very painful, I know because it happened to me many times.

I remember taking my children to school on their first day, and although their classrooms was different from my grandchildren’s, they were nothing like the classrooms in the forties. Let's face it, the way we live now is completely different as to what it was then.

This was the modern way of teaching infants, and as I looked around the classroom, it proved to me that, play proved to be the most natural way of learning children. It's amazing what over sixty years can achieve. Even the way we live has improved enormously. Yes, things are certainly changing for the better.