Education Is an Art: The Role of the Mother and the Home in Raising the Child before Sending Him to Kindergarten

Miss Nahla Marwa spoke previously, in the section "Education Is an Art," of the importance of cooperation between the home and the school, and of the necessity of understanding between the mother and the teacher over the child's education; here she examines "the role of the mother and the home in the child's education before sending him to kindergarten."

Last time I spoke of the importance of cooperation between the home and the school, and of the necessity of understanding between the mother and the teacher over the child's education. Now I shall examine the role of the mother and the home in educating the child before he is sent to kindergarten and then to school.

The task of the home and the mother is a very grave one in the child's upbringing before he goes to school — I mean in the first years of his childhood, before he becomes able to enter kindergarten. I do not exaggerate when I say that the child's personality and his growth depend on the kind of upbringing he receives at this stage of life. I have begun to feel that our homes do not give this matter sufficient importance, and that this deficiency in the child's upbringing has become a major cause of the failure of his growth. The basic reason for this deficiency is the mother's ignorance of the importance attached to the care of her child before he enters school. There is no doubt that most of our mothers have come to believe in the necessity of sending the child to school when he completes his fifth or sixth year; but unfortunately these mothers have not an atom of belief in the necessity of attending to the child's upbringing before he reaches this age — that is, the mother is ignorant of the standing of kindergartens and ignorant of the meaning of the attention she ought to give her child in his first years.

One mother said to me one day: "There is nothing in the kindergarten but play for the children; there they do not set them to their letters and they give them no books." This mother is ignorant of the value of play for children, and I do not think she knows the kindergarten program at all, or what this program means for these little ones. The kindergarten program is drawn up in a manner suited to the child's psychology; it helps to direct his inclinations and refine his instincts. And above all this, it prepares them to take up their letters, just as you wish, dear mother.

When your child enters school at five or six years of age, coming straight from home without having spent a year or two in kindergarten, he is obliged at this age to begin learning to read and write without any prior preparation. He thus stands before new, thorny, difficult things which he has never heard of and has not been prepared to receive, and this most often makes him recoil from school, because he feels that he falls short of his other companions and that he is unable to follow the program laid down for children of his age. His growth, then, is not complete, and he is in urgent need of special treatment. The reason for this retardation of his growth is that he was not sent to a kindergarten, and that his upbringing at home was neglected. This last point is no less important than the first, for the child in his first years counts for nothing in the home: in the first and second year of his life he is a doll for the mothers to amuse themselves with; then he becomes a tool in the hands of the maid. Here is the element of deficiency and the secret of the error. If every mother knew her duty, she would realize that her son's education begins from the moment he first sees the light, and she would act on what that duty imposes upon her, giving her child the preparation needed for entering kindergarten, which in its turn undertakes to prepare him properly for entering school.

Layla stood frightened before the white sheet of paper laid on the table with a little paint in the middle of it. When the teacher reached her, she encouraged her and asked her to trace something pretty with her finger by means of the paint; and Layla wept, saying that her mother beats her if she dirties her fingers with paint.

And Samir will not play ball with the children, because his clothes get dirty and his mother then deprives him of the ten piasters he gets every day.

There are many examples like these that acquaint us with the reality of our homes and the mentality of our mothers, and confirm to us the pressing need for a sound upbringing that will take charge of our children and guide them along the straight path.

Most of our children enter school for the first time screaming and crying, and sit there without uttering a letter — and that only because they have not been accustomed to freedom of speech and have not understood the meaning of their coming to school. How often I find it difficult to talk with these little ones, because they are not used to anyone speaking to them in a serious, useful way; they have received no measure of respect at home, and so it is hard for them to adapt themselves easily.

Children have beautiful ideas that have their value. How happy is the child who sees one of the grown-ups of his family at home talking with him and valuing what he says! Children have natural inclinations that must be developed and sharpened, and we have only to give them room enough to appear. How happy is the child who finds within his reach colored pencils and white paper, or picture books and the like, to do with as he pleases! Children have a courage and a heroism that we must not stand in the way of. How happy is the child who finds no barrier between himself and climbing the tree or playing in the water! Children have enchanting questions, and we wrong them if we forbid them to ask many of them. How happy is the child who receives answers to his questions from his parents, and is given sufficient explanation of everything he does not know! Children have a world of their own that must be valued and respected — and in our homes we give the child no measure of appreciation or respect. As I have said, he counts for nothing worth mentioning in the home. And I am certain that the mothers who appreciate the greatness of the responsibility laid on their shoulders at this stage of their children's lives are few — indeed rare.

Would that a revolution might take place in our homes, so that the children's own playroom would become as necessary as the dining room, and the presence of books and toys as ordinary a thing as the presence of plates and the other utensils of the table, and the child would be respected and his ideas valued as though he were a grown young man!