Early Childhood Education for Orang Asli

She is Fyhearina, 13 years old. I met her since she was 4 years old. My dad sent her and her father to UM Hospital once a week because she had problem with her feet and she could not walk although she was 4. During her therapy period, we met every week and we played together. However, after half year, she had stopped her therapy due to long distance and poor. Since that time, we do not meet each other.

Fortunately, i met her during Orang Asli New Year Party. She looked good and healthy. Indeed, i heard that she is studying in secondary school and she got 6 A's in her UPSR. It is GREAT!!!

I am happy that she could study and get good result in her UPSR. According to my dad, she is the only one who loves to learn and study hard among children in their village. Hence, i encouraged her to study hard and get scholarship to study in University or College in future.

In this village, most of the children do not study in any preschool due to the high payment. However, they will send their children to primary school as they reach 7 years old. Since they are not going any preschool and not educated at home, so, most of them cannot hold a pencil to write or trace, not recognize alphabets and numbers... Hence, children are hard to follow the syllabus in primary school and teachers cannot teach them according to their levels all the time because many students in one class. So, children have to be self-discipline and be independent in their learning. However, they do not had anyone to help them in their homework at home. Indeed, they will punish by teachers as they are not finish homework, so, most of them do not want to go to school.

According to Head Village, he had to go house by house to wake up all the children. Due to some children do not want to go to school, he has to beat them sometimes. Sometimes, he also will reward them as they go to school. Although Head Village had done this to make children go to school, but most of the parents do not care about their children's education. Most parents said to Head Village:"although we are not educated, but we still alive. why we must send them to school? they could have many homework to do and they have no time to play with friends..."

According to those parents' words, it reflected EDUCATION nowadays??? OR they really IRRESPONSIBLE???

WHY MUST give children MANY homework? WHY MUST make them be a GENIUS? WHY we cannot give them a HAPPY LEARNING? WHY we cannot make them ENJOY LEARNING?

TEACHERS, let's think about this!!!