What is it about?
The article exposes the challenges that come with using unconventional methods of establishing learners' readiness for enrollment into schools. Key among the findings, the article exposes that some indigenous ways of establishing children's readiness for formal education do not work for outliers. This can culminate in early, delayed or denied enrollment. The consequences are wide and varied but mostly come from effects of age-for-grade discordance that arise.
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Why is it important?
Juvenile delinquency is a challenge that disturbs the learning environment. Some of the causes can be traced to the age-for-grade mismatches that can arise if learners are sent to school earlier or latter than their peers. In case of people living with disabilities, non-conventional methods can gravely disadvantage them as they may never qualify for enrollment. It becomes important for policymakers to institute measures to ensure that children are not delayed, hastened or denied enrollment. The paper proposes that school authorities must have mechanisms to move into the communities to enroll children rather than just wait for communities to bring their children when they feel they are ready. Waiting for communities can disadvantage those denied access by communities using some maturity measurement methods that do not cater for outliers.
Perspectives
This is a co-authored paper. In our research we hoped to expose that the use of non-conventional methods has both pros and cons. The practice can be hailed for showing the indigenous knowledge systems as giving, to an extent, transparent and accurate maturity prediction ways that require preservation. However, it works perfectly for people of average height while prejudicing the outliers. The immediate conspicuous consequence is the late enrollment of the affected. We submit that the use of non-conventional methods of age measurement unobtrusively upsets education quality through facilitating stereotyping, discrimination and age-heterogeneous classes. Accordingly, we propose a 'backward-integration-enrollment' strategy; getting into communities to enroll not to wait for the community to bring children to school
Felistas Zimano
Midlands State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: ‘Clutch-the-ear’ and get enrolled: The antagonistic intrusion of indigenous knowledge systems to the detriment of contemporary educational developments, South African Journal of Childhood Education, September 2018, AOSIS Open Journals,
DOI: 10.4102/sajce.v8i1.557.
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