Kindergartens and primary schools in Guangzhou have started accepting applications for admission. And parents are overcoming all the odds to queue up for long hours to get their children admitted, possibly because they believe in the saying, "don't let your children lose at the starting line". Parents should indeed attach the utmost importance to their children's education, but they need to review their faith in the doubtful saying, says an article in China Youth Daily. Excerpts:

Most Chinese parents, especially urban parents, believe that their children will not become intelligent or be successful in life if they do not get the "best" education in the first six years of their lives.

Parents think that to become really intelligent and knowledgeable, their children have to learn mental arithmetic and at least one foreign language even before they enter primary school.

Influenced by the "don't let your children lose at the starting line" saying, parents spend hours every day browsing through books to learn everything about early education.

Needless to say, rarely do any of them doubt the validity of such practices. The experts we hear and/or read present seemingly convincing conclusions but they almost never come up with conclusive evidence to prove their point one way or the other.

"Losing at the starting line" is what all parents fear. But this fear is not justified.

Life is like a marathon race, not a 100- or 200-meter sprint. It requires physical fitness, stamina, endurance, determination and strategy. The starting line is just a small part of life's race. In fact, every stage of education is important but none is more important than the other.

People who have turned early education into a business seem to have magnified its importance. Book publishers, people running training courses or coaching centers and other organizations and individuals associated with the early education business are the ones who create the saying "don't let your children lose at the starting line" to make more money.

Besides, many parents put all their hopes in their only child, and have turned senior and junior high schools - and now even primary schools and kindergartens - into new battlefields.

The opinions expressed on this page do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

(China Daily 05/27/2011 page9)