UNESCO’s “Early Childhood Care and Education” webpage

This week I reviewed the UNESCO’s “Early Childhood Care and Education” webpage (http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/strengthening-education-systems/early-childhood/), The three insights I have gained include:

 1.  The country ECE profiles that are part of this site provide valuable information about ECE as it exists in other countries.  I have found in reviewing the information that other countries are struggling with the same issues of equity, affordability, quality and access.  I look forward to reading more of these and learning about my counterparts in other countries.

2.  The international resources from books to videos are also another source of imformation.  The video of the early childhood programme for the nomadic Loipi of northern Kenya was very interesting and to me reinforced my belief in focusing on the whole child- from nutrition to socialization- as part of early childhood education. 

3.  In addition,  the policy briefs are very informative.  Upon reviewing the brief "Preschool Class for 6-year olds in Sweden: A Bridge between Early Childhood and Compulsory School", I found it interesting that lowering the entry age of children for school was a concern in Sweden because of their view of childhood as "a golden time of life" and that lowering the entry age would take away a part of childhood.  This echos my own concern that a focus on academic standards in the United States could lead our early educators to use practices that might take away from our children "being kids".

After reviewing this website I plan on adding it to my list of resources to use and refer to. 

 

 

Sharing Web Resources- The Global Summit on Childhood

My search of the ACEI website this week took me to a video of the Global Summit on Childhood held in Washington DC in March of 2012.  The feature speaker was Christopher Clouder from the U.K. who spoke about his work traveling the world to study childhood.  He began his inspiring speech  by saying “I dreamed that life was joy.  And then I awoke and realized life was duty.   And then I went to work and low and behold I discovered that duty can be joy.  We have a duty to all of the children in the world.   We are very fortunate that we work with children and can experience this joy that children bring to the world.”  Clouder described the early educator’s relationship to children by saying  “children inform us, children inspire us” and that we as educators are in search of that” quality of childhood that has a joyousness to it.”  He also described how educators from around the world are brought together often to discuss problems…” When we work together, so often we see what is deficient, what could be better, what is not right, the injustices, the cruelity…but we should not let that  fact be a burden”  Instead he pointed to the fact that as early educators we need to work together to “find those roots of childhood joy”  and that is “what encourages us to go back to our individual struggles, the challenges we face in our daily world knowing that we are with others finding that childhood quality that lives within every human being throughout their lives.”

 

Clouder also spoke of working with young children by saying “When working with children we have to be respectful to the child, they are our teachers.”  He described teaching as a reciprocal process rather than a one way process of the teacher giving a child knowledge.  

 

Describing the future of childhood and of education, Clouder said “We have to find our paths as we go along…we are also always learning our way.  The childhood of us is not the childhood of today and the childhood of today is not the childhood of the future.”  

Clouder read a quote from a declaration that UNICEF put together about the future of the education system worldwide, basically coming to the conclusion that educational institutions of the future must  put more emphasis on children’s social and emotional capabilities.   It also stated that the importance of acquiring factual knowledge will decline significantly in favor of the ability to find access to and creatively utilize information.  

 

Although,  Clouder was not discussing the specific topics of accessibility, responsiveness and awareness his speech was an inspiring reminder to me of the reason that we as early care and education professionals work in this field.  Earlier this week in my discussion post I described ways in which early care and education professionals can be more responsive to the needs of children and families.  I included in my post the fact that child care workers should be paid better and that professional development and technical assistance should be available to programs seeking quality.  These are some of the things  that I have often seen as barriers to providing responsive care and education in child care.  However, most child care workers are not working in the field of early care and education to become rich.  Instead they work because of the joy of childhood that Clouder described in his speech.  I visited a program as part of my work this week and as I talked with the director, she spoke about her dedicated staff.  She said that even though her staff only make minimum wage ($7.25/hr) they have dedicated their lives to the families and the children.  The director told me of how her staff paid for their registration fees and spent a Saturday at a conference without being paid because they wanted to.  I realized that a responsive early childhood educator is more than someone who has a degree in early childhood and makes substantially more than minimum wage.  They have a passion for working with young children and they continue to learn and grow as part of the reciprocal relationship with the children and families.  Education alone does not make a great teacher.  Likewise, more pay does not make a teacher better.  It takes heart, dedication and a love for the joy of childhood.  Passion for working with young children is a quality that is priceless.

 

 Reference

Clouder, Christopher (2012) The Future of Childhood.  The Global Summit on Childhood Retreived from:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7r-idxHixo&feature=youtu.be

 

Equity and Excellence in Early Care and Education

This week I listened to a podcast by Maysoun Chehab is the Regional Early Childhood Care and Education Program Coordinator, at the Arab Resource Collective (ARC), a not-for-profit non-governmental organization based in Beirut, Lebanon to  raise awareness of child rights and providing training early childhood caregivers on best practices.  She described her most rewarding projects as the psychosocial support project after the war in Lebanon in 2006.  During the war, 126 primary schools were destroyed.  The ARC trained parents and teachers about the children’s post conflict emotional and social reactions.  Maysoun commented that they found that they had to provide the parents and the teachers with support first so that they then would be better equipped to support the children.  It is important that parents of young children are taking care of themselves so that they can better care for their children.  This reminded me of Head Start and Early Head Start program in the United States.  In HS/EHS, parents and families are provided with supports because they are viewed as the child's first and most important teacher.  Parents are encouraged to acheive family goals which support the families economic and social well being and ultimately supports the learning and develop of the children in the family.

An Economic View of Child Care

This week’s review of the website National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies http://www.naccrra.org/ lead me to two articles that I found particularly interesting as a result of studying this week about the way early childhood education is viewed by economist, politicians and neurobiologists.  

“How parents are making budgetary trade-offs to offset the cost of childcare”  By Susan Johnston September 4, 2012  Retrieved from US News and World Report http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/articles/2012/09/04/dealing-with-the-rising-cost-of-childcare and “Child Care costs exceed rent in most states” by Emily Jane Fox @CNN August 16, 2012 retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/16/pf/child-care-cost/

Both of these articles used information from the NACCRRA website to take a look at the economic side of child care for parents and for centers.  For parents the cost of child care is getting increasingly difficult to pay.  To quote the article by Emily Jane “While the experience of raising a child may be priceless, the cost to provide care for them is getting to be more than most parents can afford”.  This is the issue that economists and politicians alike are and should be concerned with.  As parents and families are spending more money on child care, cost for other expenses like food and gas are also on the rise(Fox, 2012).  In addition,  in 35 states the cost of infant care exceeds the tuition at a four year public college (Johnston, 2012) and costs more than rent payments in 35 of the 50 states for a single child and exceeds rent payments in all 50 states when paying for two children (Fox, 2012).  As child care costs are taking more and money out of the pockets of working parents, families are spending less on other things like entertainment and travel (Johnston, 2012).  

The flip side of this issue is the side of the child care programs.  Why does child care cost so much?  Why are programs raising their rates?  It comes down to the cost of care.  In addition to the fact that child care programs are feeling the effects of economy along with every other part of our society, an increased need for higher quality has also added to the price tag of care.  As Marsha Basloe, executive director of New York's Early Care & Learning Council was quoted in Fox’s article stated "We have very high regulations and standards, from the ratio of teachers to students, to training and education standards, and that leads to a greater cost,".  Quality care is important especially since it has been linked better outcomes for children in later years.  To summarize the data about quality, basically it means that children attending quality early care and education programs are more likely to be successful in school and in life.  And quality simply costs more.

One of the quotes from Fox’s article that I found particularly interesting and somewhat controversial was a comment by David Abuaf, chief investment officer at Hefty Wealth Partners in Auburn, Ind., explaining  that rising college costs contribute to rising service costs, including childcare he was quoted in saying "The cost of educated people has outpaced the demand for regular goods."  I related this statement to the fact that research has linked the education level of child care providers to the quality of care provided creating a need for the wages of child care providers to rise to cover the cost of their education and also for child care centers to recruit and retain quality providers.   

But to pay those wages, child care centers need to increase the cost of care for parents.  

So how do programs balance the cost of quality care with the rates they are charging parents?  How can we as a nation provide quality and affordable child care to all of the children and families who need it?  Don’t our children deserve the right to have equal access to quality care and education that will give them the start they need in life to be successful?  After all, the future of our children and the future of our nation depend on it.