I’m a terrific child!

I’m a terrific child!:

A home schooling project in Kendari provides a new kind of early learning experience

Dirk Tomsa

The Kingdom Academy in Kendari Dirk Tomsa

It’s 7.30 am in Kendari, the capital of Southeast Sulawesi. In the backstreets of this small town of just under 300,000 people, two boys aged two and six are getting ready for kindergarten and pre-school. It’s only a short walk to their classrooms once they have finished their breakfast and put on their uniforms. In fact, they don’t even have to leave the house. Both the kindergarten and pre-school are located inside their home and run by their mother, Mey Tanjung Niasari. Welcome to the Kingdom School. Kendari’s only school in a home.
Founded in 2009, the Kingdom School is a unique initiative in this part of Indonesia. It offers kindergarten and pre-schooling for children aged between two and six, but it is early learning with a difference. Children are allocated to groups and classes based not only on age, but also intellectual ability. The curriculum revolves primarily around character-building and increasing the children’s self-confidence. As a trained psychologist and motivational trainer, Mey is convinced that this approach facilitates early learning much better than conventional methods focused on memorising facts, words and numbers, which are still widely used in Indonesia. Defending her teaching philosophy, Mey criticises the lack of creativity, innovation and critical thinking in the country’s school system. ‘From Year 7 to

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