Who is in Nursery School, My Child or Me?, by Stephanie Shaakaa
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Once upon a time, nursery school was where children learned to sing rhymes, draw the sun with yellow crayons, and stumble through the alphabet with laughter. Today, it feels like a postgraduate program disguised with colorful chairs and plastic toys. The kind of assignments these schools give could make even a university graduate reach for paracetamol. Some nights, I honestly don’t know if the homework is for my son, Maddoxx, or for me because I now consult Google like a loyal student before assisting him with “simple” nursery questions.
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Nursery schools today seem to have forgotten their age bracket.
There are evenings when I’m genuinely unsure who the homework is meant for.
Imagine me researching uses of soil and objects that begin with letter D like a final-year student preparing for a project defense.
What used to be a phase of play-based learning has now turned into a mini-academic marathon. Some of these assignments are so advanced they could qualify for secondary school coursework. Can someone please remind these schools that we are still at the ABC stage?
The situation reveals something more troubling than we care to admit, the quiet collapse of foundational teaching. In many cases, teachers no longer take the time to teach in class. Homework has become the smokescreen that covers up ineffective teaching and poor classroom engagement. Schools load children with endless assignments to create the illusion of academic rigor, while parents exhausted and overworked are the ones solving them. The child becomes a spectator in their own learning journey.
It’s both funny and alarming. Somewhere along the line, we lost the essence of early education. Nursery school has become a contest of who can stress children and their parents the most. These assignments are no longer about reinforcing learning, they are about performance. Schools pile homework upon homework to convince parents that their wards are doing well, while teachers quietly escape the real work of teaching. The result? Children are overwhelmed, parents are exhausted, and learning remains superficial.
I saw this pattern years ago when my son was in primary school. His mathematics teacher gave daily assignments as if he were preparing the pupils for the Olympics. One example solved in class, and the rest ten or more questions left as homework. Every day. The poor boy was the student, but I, who had long graduated from university, was the one solving equations late into the night. One day, I’d had enough and visited the school. The Vice Principal intervened, and only then was the teacher called to order. It made me wonder how many parents quietly bear the same burden, mistaking over-assignment for academic excellence.
He was the pupil, but I was the one burning midnight oil solving equations.That experience opened my eyes to how we confuse excessive workload for excellence.
We forget that homework was never meant to be the centerpiece of education. In fact, its origin was punitive, a method used in ancient Italy to discipline inattentive students. It was supposed to be corrective, not oppressive.
Historically, it began as a punishment for indolent students, a corrective tool, not a substitute for teaching.
Today, it has been rebranded as proof of seriousness, while in reality it often represents a failure of classroom instruction.Somehow, it has become the new badge of seriousness in Nigerian schools. When teachers lack creativity in the classroom, they compensate with piles of take-home work.They have even coined another word for it to make it appear like it is fun,they now call it “Home Fun”.
Homework has become a cover-up for lazy teaching, a way to project activity without achieving actual learning.
Parents must stop accepting this as normal. Paying school fees is not enough, education demands vigilance. Visit your child’s school.
Make sure the school’s reputation is not built on fancy uniforms and social media photos, but on genuine learning outcomes. As parents, we owe it to our children to demand more than decorated frustration.
Parents, therefore, must take back their power. It’s not enough to pay school fees and hope for the best. Know the curriculum. Visit your child’s school. Ask to see the Principal or Proprietor. Demand to know what and how your child is being taught. Education should not be outsourced entirely to institutions that sometimes confuse pressure with progress.
And while it’s wise to equip children with laptops, tablets, and learning apps to reinforce their studies remember they are supplements, not substitutes. What children need most is patient guidance, interaction, and curiosity not endless worksheets that turn learning into punishment,technology is no replacement for engagement. A child learns best when learning is guided, not when they are buried under worksheets.
If we continue this way, nursery schools might soon introduce dissertations and viva voce sessions for four-year-olds with parents like me bagging honorary degrees in Homework Management.
And when a nation’s children start learning exhaustion before enlightenment, that nation has already failed its next generation.
Education should enlighten, not exhaust. It should ignite curiosity, not anxiety. Let us restore childhood to its rightful place where learning begins with laughter, discovery, and a sense of wonder. Because if we lose that, then we are not raising learners, we are raising weary little adults too early for the world they haven’t yet begun to understand.
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