Pre-schools or residences?
How many residences in Dhaka have been converted to pre-schools in recent years? May be there is no accurate statistics, but the traffic situation during school closing time only in Dhanmondi indicates that the number of such converted schools is pretty high. The debate only remains in the domain of unbearable traffic situation in a residential locality. But we seem to be ignorant of the fact that there is also a child psychology perspective of this process of conversion of schools from residences.
The single unit residences of Dhanmondi were originally designed to accommodate one or two families, but they are now forced to function as pre-schools. The small yards, where may be two to three children used to run and play, now have dozens. These contrasts call for an assessment of space quality of these converted buildings in terms of learning environment and other necessary aspects which should be addressed in a pre-school.
The overall physical space quality plays an important role in forming the learning environment of a school beside curriculum and teaching resource. Currently, in most of the cases this conversion is not taking into account consideration of space quality.
The children have a high learning curve during the early years of school possessing limitless motivation to achieve competence within their environment which is significant in the formation of the later adulthood. To ensure better adulthood, and a better society of course, the best learning environment has to be ensured in every school. Considering the present state of Dhaka, it is impossible to provide new designed space for every pre-school of the city, rather providing improvement plans for the existing ones through research is the rational step. The residences, when converted to schools, must undergo a process of analysis and design to achieve the highest level of performance.
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