1,000 Books in Three Years

For Pre-Schoolers?

For Pre-Schoolers?

By Dr Stephen Whitehead

Photo by Tom Hermans on Unsplash

At time of writing there is not much happening in China’s kindergartens and preschools, indeed in any school in China — reason being, they are all closed due to the coronavirus epidemic.

Hopefully, by the time you read this the emergency will have passed. If not, then we’ll all be spending more time indoors.

But that problem aside, there are many interesting initiatives happening in Chinese schools, driven not least by the strong desire of the Chinese people to become not just richer in their bank accounts, but richer in knowledge and understanding, thereby taking their place among the most educated nations of the world.

And nowhere is this drive more evident than in Chinese preschools.

One of the most innovative preschools is the Experimental Kindergarten of the China National Children’s Center (CNCC) in Beijing.

In March 2019, the CNCC launched a family action plan to help children develop ‘good thinking, behaviours and habits’, and a central component of this project is reading. Nothing unusual about this, I hear you say, until you learn the CNCC target is for every child to read one book per day and a total of 1,000 books in the three years of kindergarten.

I would predict that any child able to keep up that particular ‘good habit’ is likely, by the age of 18, to be better read than the average Oxbridge Professor. No doubt that is the Chinese objective.

Oxbridge standard or not, these Chinese students will have easily overtaken the typical UK and US child who read on average, 10 books a year. They will also be more educated than most American adults, over half of whom are “functionally illiterate”: unable to carry out simple tasks like reading drug labels or writing essays for a job. And if that doesn’t convince teachers, globally, to put a supreme effort into childhood literacy, then perhaps the US data revealing more than three out of four of those on welfare, 85% of unmarried mothers and 68% of those arrested to be illiterate, helps do so.

So clearly, the CNCC is onto something important, which is not just about enabling the average Chinese primary school kid to be able to critically analyse Nietzsche.

Basically, no single education skill determines life chances as much as literacy.

Which in an age when children are more likely to be absorbed with social media than Robert Louis Stevenson, or even Harry Potter, makes for a worrying fact.

Below are the key strategies deployed by the CNCC and designed to help achieve their objective of ‘1000 books in 3 years’:

Photo by Senjuti Kundu on Unsplash

1. The children are encouraged to share their new knowledge gained from books and stories. The teachers established a ‘Happy Readers’ Club, which serves as a platform for children to share their thinking and feelings with others.

2. The teachers set different reading goals for children of different ages. Children 3–4 enjoy listening to stories and reading picture books. Children aged 4–5 prefer reading their favourite books repeatedly and are willing to tell the stories to others. Children aged 5–6 will choose the books they are interested in independently and spend an amount of time reading each day.

3. Effective interaction between parents and teachers is crucial to establishing good reading habits in pre-schoolers. CNCC teachers take time to educate the parents into the most effective ways of encouraging reading (e.g. spending time reading stories to 3–4 year-olds). Parents are advised on the scientific rationale behind children’s reading and intellectual development.

4. Considering children’s interests and their characteristics, teachers recommend picture books, history story books, popular science books, children’s literature books, and cartoons and comics to parents.

5. A good family culture provides the framework upon which the children develop the habit of daily reading. Creating a good reading atmosphere at home is very important as children are consciously influenced by the words and actions of their parents.

6. Parent-child reading at home improves the effects of reading while also contributing to good communication between parent and child and this commitment is required of parents with CNCC children. Talking to children with the words in the books makes it easier for children to learn and understand.

Accepting that the CNCC are in many respects replicating good practice in many preschools around the world, what is of particular note is the heavy parental involvement.

For the CNCC, the concept of the ‘learning community’ is more than simply offering up words of encouragement to mum and dad every parent evening; issuing regular missives on the latest school event; advising parents to spend time reading to their kids; or even offering guidance on internet access and smartphone usage.

Parents are placed at the heart of the CNCC learning community, and also at the heart of the learning process. Without parental involvement and active support, there is little chance of CNCC succeeding in their ambitious aim to have the children achieve ‘1000 books in 3 years’.

The deliberate attempt to ‘educate the parents’ into fundamental techniques and learning strategies is the vital element here and one which all kindergartens and schools would do well to follow.

In an age when fewer and fewer preschool children are being read to by mum and dad, educating the parents is rapidly becoming the cornerstone of childhood literacy, if not international education.

Indeed, getting the commitment of parents to the learning process, and explaining to them what their role is in their child’s education, is almost as important as eliciting the commitment of the student.

By Dr Stephen Whitehead (opinions are author’s own)

This article originally appeared in EDDi: Educational Digest International.