My daughter went to school for the first time today.
She is a bright, happy child and a part of me really thought that she would fit in fine; she would meet new people and make friends that would stay with her and serve her a lifetime of happiness.
But that did not happen.
She went to school alright. She walked in alone and did not even turn back. She acted like itwas all very normal. I saw, with my very eyes, other children screaming and shouting. My child did not do that. She was a champ.
I went to pick her up at the end of her classes. She came back like a champ as well. I was so very proud when I saw her roaming around and not crying. I high-fived her and asked her how school was.
She politely said to me,“Let’s not talk about it.” I thought she was just tired, and she just did not want to talk.
However, at bedtime, she told me how much she hated it.
She told me how strict everything was. She told me how much she hated being alone without me or her mother. She was quiet the whole day. She did not talk to anyone in school. The sight of everyone crying left a scar in her.
She was crying while she was talking to me. They were not her normal tears; they were tears of utter heartbreak.
My dream of seeing my child happy in school shattered.
I do not think my daughter will forgive me for today. Neither will her mother. She insisted strongly that I wait. She is just over three years old, she said.
But I have talked to people and almost everyone told me that this feeling of hating the first day of school does not change even if the child is five years old.
I was told to trust the school system. The system will correct this trauma by itself. But I cannot help but feel this gut-wrenching guilt of putting her through this. This trauma does not look temporary.
I was told that this is the scenario of all children all over the world. They are accustomed to the rules and regulations designed for their home and when these children are placed in a set of different rules and regulations, they react violently to it.
But the above explanation really does not add up, does it?
If that were really the case, children, at least in our country, would have a jolly time going to school in a month’s time. But that is not really the case. Most of my friends hated their early education. My wife talks about her traumatic early education in vivid detail.
It feels like the system is designed to break a child’s personality, then rebuild it in a mannerthat is more manageable for the teachers. Why else will a child be taught to be in a line from the first day of school?
Now, it is very hard finding a good school in Bangladesh. As such, what I did was, I looked for the schools that have been around for a long time; a school that had experience in dealing with a child and the difficult first days.
These legacy schools, as I like to call them, have a very limited number of seats and they take their students at three years old, and only at the playgroup level. The students then slowly climb up and are there at that school until he/she graduates. It is almost impossible to get that student admitted in a good school at, say, nursery, let alone class five.
That is why parents like us attempt to admit our child to those schools at the age of three even though we are not completely comfortable with it. To be fair, these schools do have a reputation for bringing out successful students.
I am seriously thinking about pulling her back from school. I paid a lot of money for her admission, but that doesn't really matter. I know that if I were to put her into school again in a year’s time, I will not be able to put her into one of these legacy schools.
But that should be okay. There are more schools in Dhaka that are much more lenient in terms of getting her oriented into preschool. But what is the guarantee that she will not cry again next year, or the year after that? What is the guarantee that she will not feel betrayed by her parents, once again?
The more I write this piece, the more I realize the problem is not the school, but the system through which we get them oriented into the school. There must be a science to it. Surely, with all our researchers and education scientists we can do better for these children. Surely, we can do better not to fail these children.
Farsad Akhter works at an international development organization.
