IS EARLY CHILDHOOD ERODING?

As our society advances into the technological age and knowledge based society we tend to become very academic in our approaches to education . Besides the hero Superman we have superwomen, super parents and we wish to produce the super child. A friend mentioned that we are also producing little academic robots . Do you agree with that?Why not? Nowadays one must obtain as many A's as possible and to achieve that parents send their 6 year old to tuition classes . Parental demands on the kindergartens and nurseries will force the latter to concede to the demands. After all the preschools are dependent on parental patronage. Well there are exceptions of course to mere determination of how much fees to charge. In addition how many subjects are children supposed to swallow?Any how many activities per day ?ranging from tuition to religious class to swimming and martial arts. What happen to children nowadays? Compared to my childhood days the kids nowadays are different. Smarter of course due the technological gadgets around. You can claim that of course measured by environmental stimulations and the responses given to such attractions or distractions. However what do modern kids missed? Well during my childhood days we are one with the natural environment. We love nature and maybe our natural intelligence was greater.(Thanks to Howard Gardner's Natural Intelligence) I remembered running with my friends to the riverbank behind my kampong house after the rain just to jump into the river from the riverbank. I remembered how we went into the muddy pond and picked kangkong(a type of green veetable) from them. I remembered how we got into the paddy fields and we were not scared of lintah getting upon our little feet. Of course there was my grandfather's orchard with all types of fruits and we even climbed the rambutan( Malaysian fruit) and coco trees. Life was wonderfully natural and delightful.Then as we walked suddenly the itek angsa (type of duck)came to attack us and we were not afraid. The games we played were all natural like konda kondi,( type of game) playing marbles, keteng teng(type of game) and pondok pondok( house). The boys collected spiders to put in the match boxes.There was no Thesaurus (toy for us) then. We developed the imaginable train from sand , strings and empty tins. I used to go up the swing from the Ciku Ayah Tree in front of my kampong(village) mansion.We played with mud, sand, water and rain and there was fun and fun everywhere. Life was indeed simple and we were not afraid to go to the shops without our parents to help buy oil, flour or sugar. Life was pretty safe. The air we breathed was fresh and we look forward to hear the early morning rooster (our alarm clock) We learn t by doing and observing .We mixed very well with adults during kampong activities like the kenduri and Hari Raya .So what is the moral of this narrative? Early childhood is so different nowadays. Its much more complicated and demanding.I certainly hope kids nowadays have their share of the natural environment and joy because childhood comes only once.But of course the second childhood comes later in very old age when senility seeps in. As parents try to provide experiences which can be found in the natural environment for the kids instead of roaming around concrete jungles only. In this way life can be interestingly balanced looked from a different perspective.