Of all people, you would expect me to be excited about the promise some of the candidates running for President who are saying if they are elected, they will increase spending for Early Childhood. Not so. I’m not an advocate of spending without a plan. As with most government programs, when billions are dumped into a pot, that pot takes off running and is never heard from again!
Early Childhood Education is a very important issue to me, and that means being careful with the funds. Edith and I started our little corner of the world each with a whopping $80.00. We started off simply with a bag full of toys, a stack of books, and a lot of plans and a lot of heart. In 12 years, the GS has grown into a respectable school. Sure we’ve made mistakes, but not billion dollar mistakes!
When you look at the national picture of education, no two government representatives would agree on even what early childhood is. The truth is, most representatives can’t give you a straight answer concerning early childhood at all. They don’t really know very much about it. So the idea that someone even at the top is eager and willing to throw billions into something they know little about is alarming at best. “But if you give the money to people who DO know about early childhood…”
Yeah, yeah, but that never happens. What does happen is that a particular favored group gets a lot of money to build a spectacular building someplace as a show place for education. Now ditto this nationwide and presto bingo, we’ve spent billions. But the level of early childhood never really gets any better. Most funds go into buildings, and that has nothing whatsoever to do with early childhood. When buildings stand as the shining example of how we invested in early childhood education, there really is no improvement at all.
I’m a grass roots builder. I see every problem solved from the bottom up. If our nation wants really good early childhood education, it begins on every block with parents talking to one another about what they want for their children, and then turning a garage into that very special place. It’s really that simple.
Children don’t need a state of the arts building. They need people who love them and teach them. They need people who are there and promise to be there for them, teaching and struggling every day; people who keep those promises. Early childhood is short. It begins at birth ( some believe it begins before birth) and it goes through age eight. There is the infant stage – about a year; the toddler stage – about two years; the preschool stage – about three years and is finished by first, second and third grade. Once children go to big school, the foundation we commonly call early childhood is pretty much over. So what we are talking about are three different cares: infancy, toddlerhood, and preschool (including kindergarten).
I’m an advocate of in home care for children under three. I think homes do better than institutions on all levels. At three, it’s time for kids to start to learn. Sometimes a home can cut it, and sometimes it can’t. But no matter what, the idea of pouring money into a private home is almost silly. It’s the home, the environment, the care provider who is the key here – and no amount of money will change those basic things or make them better. It’s the tenet of the home which is the selling point for childcare.
At three, a child has shuffled off his infancy and toddlerhood and is ready to learn, but once again, he doesn’t need a state of the arts building. He needs solid caring teachers who can teach him what he wants to know. You can buy that with more Federal funds for salaries, but it wouldn’t take billions of dollars and probably shouldn’t.
The real problem with early childhood education is ultimately a problem with staff. For decades, nobody really believed just how important the zero to five formative years are. We believed as a nation that anyone off the street willing to sit with the kids was all that was needed. We believed that we could warehouse hundreds of kids under one roof with a play space no bigger than a king sized bed. We could throw unthinkable food in their direction counting ketchup as a vegetable, provide fewer than one toy per child, and nap them half the day, and presto bingo, we have acceptable “Early Childhood.”
Changing that idea starts at the bottom not at the top with more money thrown away. But the powers that be would disagree.
In my town, the local high brow magazine declares the same terrible childcare institution as “the best childcare in the city” every year. In reality, this place is a blight to childcare anywhere. The administration refuses to allow teachers to teach anything to the children including letters or numbers. The teachers never read to the children, never take them outside. The meals are horrible, scanty and there is often too little to share among the kids who are hungry. Licensed teachers are penalized for having an education. The children are expected sit hour after hour in tiny noisy rooms where they are also expected to sleep, eat and go to the bathroom. There are no field trips, no adventure, no stretches. And THIS is the best childcare in the city? So says the local magazine, and so says the funnel of money our government pours into this horrible example year after year. Money, by the way, that is used to buy doors and floors and concrete play spaces. In my humble opinion, it’s a lost cause from the beginning because doors and floors and concrete won’t elevate childcare to a learning discovering environment. No amount of funding will ever manage to change the face of early childhood when administrations have little concept of what the meaning of the expression “to explore” means to a child.
So throwing tax dollars away are not going to make early childhood any better. What is going to make it better are the loving efforts of parents. This will elevate early childhood to the kind of positive experience children will carry with them all their lives. Only parents can make early childhood better by helping those of us who provide childcare be responsible for all we do for the young child. It is through cooperation that we will together raise the expectations of the early classroom to the heights it should be.