Of all the years in an individual’s education, I think that the most important years are those of childhood. During this period of infancy, children learn important lessons on how to interact with society. Children learn lessons on how to play nicely by experimentation and these lessons carry on into the future. Similar to the process of training pets, educating children is not about show and tell but about reinforcement of known behavior. Schools can’t show children what is “good” in the same way that an owner can’t show a puppy to sit. Childhood education gives individuals an opportunity to experiment and it is only through reinforcement of such learned behavior that one can learn what is right and wrong. This experimentation is the key to why childhood education is the most essential period for learning.

In my personal experience, kindergarten was a year I learned many lessons on how to interact with society. I learned not to buy friends, not to steal, not to cheat, and not to punish myself physically for bad behavior.

When I first started school, I was not very well accepted. Because I was the only Asian in my class I was initially excluded from everyone else. Everyone shared their lunch and snacks together but I didn’t have any part in this experience. Specifically, there was one group that I wanted to be a part of. This group had all the great things a kid could want: junkfood. I desperately wanted to be part of their group and so one day I asked them what it would take to be in their little clique. They asked me what I had to offer and naturally, I didn’t have anything they wanted. I offered them what I knew had value, which was money. Fortunately at that time, the largest currency I knew was a quarter and I barely knew how to count. The largest number I knew was 10 and I so offered each one of them 10 quarters. They agreed to it, and I had to find 10 quarters for each of them for the following day.
At home, I found out that my Grandma has a stash of quarters. I didn’t know I was stealing at that time, so I took about 30 quarters. I wrapped it up in bounty, and at school the next day I gave each member their little stash. After lunch on that same day, I was caught. One of the members told the teacher I gave him 10 quarters. The teacher then proceeded to ask me questions about the source and threatened to call my home.

I was scared and felt guilty. I didn’t know that I stole and the connection of my actions to the definition of “taking something that is not yours” was a shocking realization. I bit the top of my hand to punish myself for my actions. When the teacher came around again, I was lectured again about hurting myself.

If I hadn’t been caught that day, I would not have known what it means to steal. I wouldn’t have known that you’re not supposed to buy friends, and that self-punishment shouldn’t involve inflicting physical pain. These lessons were learned through experience and I am quite thankful for the series of events that happened that day.

At another point in my childhood, my brother told me about his experience cheating. For a spelling test one day, he found out that he could score higher if he opened his notebook in his desk. By looking at it while taking the test, his score was guaranteed. Inevitably he was caught and failed the exam. When he told me what he did, I learned what cheating was. Looking back though, I wonder to myself how a child would know what cheating is, if he or she has never been exposed to the act of cheating. It also leads to the question of “how does a child know what is right and wrong?”

To answer the proposed question, I think it is only through experience that an individual can learn to connect actions to notions of good and bad. Though anyone can learn at any time, childhood is the only time when such mistakes are forgivable. If an individual didn’t learn that a certain action is wrong as a child, society will continue to punish that individual as an adult. Childhood is one of the most important times in person’s life because of this freedom to experiment. It’s not that schools teach us, but it is that we teach ourselves. Schools provide the guidelines but we can only show ourselves what we can and can’t do.