Thank you.

I would like to say a special thank you to all of my colleagues and to Dr Nagel especially. You all have been a great inspiration and motivation to me. I have learnt a great deal in this course especially in the areas of child development in three different domains and for three different age groups. It has been a very interesting journey for me so far in this course as I went through all the resources. With this knowledge, I continue my journey into early childlhood studies. I wish each and every one of my colleague all the best in their career journey as well. Thank you all. Thank you, Dr Nagel.

When I Think of Childhood

I have learnt a lot from this course and the most profound knowledge that I would take away with me is that knowing a child's brain develop based on his/her experiences. Let's focus on giving them the best experience so that they pick up all that they need to be successful and a better grown up in their life instead of just with feeding information into them so that they can score better in school. 

Testing for Intelligence?

I believe children should not be assessed and tested just for the sake of attaining marks. It should be done purely to observe if a child had acquired the skills that id appropriate for his age. And to help the child to achieve it if he/she is not really there yet. 

In Malaysia, where I come from, school going children are heavily assessed by exams. There is a very unhealthy competition going on in the school. It is has been weaved into their mind that scoring more marks on the test or exams is the ultimate goal in their school life because that will determine how successful they will be in their adult life. There is no room at all for developing other areas of a child's healthy growth for example their social emotional skills. 

I am currently living in the Scandinavian region. From what I have observed, the school going children here are not pressured into making it to the top of their class. They are exposed to much more interesting activities such as connecting to the nature by studying and being involved in it. I think children should be relieved from the pressure of reading and memorizing facts from a text books for the sake of attaining higher marks in their exams. This itself is stress for their developing brain.