Poverty and Early Childhood Education Around the World

The World Bank: Poverty in Latin America & the Carribbean:  Opportunities for the Children of Colombia

     I visited the website of the Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre’s page and learned about the opportunities for the children in impoverished areas of Colombia.  The three areas of the article that most interested me were; which circumstances allowed the children to access opportunities, access to goods and services for children, and the Urban-Rural Gap.

     In the article, “Measuring Inequality in Opportunity in Latin America and the Caribbean”, Barros shares that there are five opportunities for children to access key services and goods between 1997 and 2003.  Two of the services were directly related to education, while the other 3 were connected to housing.   The Colombian Human Opportunity Index measures the availability of services that are necessary for children to progress in life, such as having running water.  The Index takes into consideration both the unfair distribution of services and the fact that in the last two decades income inequality has remained the same.

Access to Opportunities

     There were several factors that demonstrated that some growth had been made during the years 1997-2003 toward the access of opportunities that children in Colombia have experienced.  Colombia experienced an increased regional access of opportunities by approximately 9%.  This was attributed to the conclusion of 5^th grade on time, primary education, and school attendance for 9-15 year olds, access to clean water, sanitation and electricity between the ages of 0-17.  The HOI assessed that there had been a 17% increase based on the conclusion of 9^th and 11^th grade on time, school attendance to preschool, children 0-5 in un-crowded dwellings, children 0-5 with health insurance, safe environments 0-17 and access to telephones for ages 0-17.  The HOI concluded that there was more growth in the access to opportunities for children in the first three stages of life which could be attributed to the vulnerability of children during infancy.  The growth demonstrated translates from a 26 to a 56 percentage point.  Therefore the adverse circumstances that children face have been decreased by opening the doors of opportunity just slightly.  

     Despite HOI’s advances, the 2008 opportunity gaps between those children in favorable and unfavorable circumstances remain large.  The largest gaps remain in the areas of education, food security, access to water, sewerage, and the internet.

Access to Services and Goods

     In the last decade the largest gains have been made towards providing access to services and goods to the children of Colombia.  Health insurance, preschool attendance, completion of middle and high school on time, sewer, electrical and telephones has been the contributing factors that have slightly improved the conditions for children.  Access to water remained nearly the same over the last decade and the index showed that “security-perception plus victimization” also remained the same.

Rural vs. Urban

     Children in urban areas continued to have better access to opportunities and access to goods and services that are important to success in life, than those in rural areas.  Over the last decade, the gap did shrink by 9 percentage points; however the main disadvantages for rural children continued to be education and Housing.  Education improved in the younger grades; however completion of 9^th grade on time and completion of secondary education continue to fall behind.  In Housing, access to water and sanitation remained low.  Despite the lag in rural areas, they did improve in their completion of primary -8^th grade on time, and there were improvements in access to telephone service, electricity and some sanitation.

     Reviewing this research on poverty in another country allowed me to see that here in the United States the majority of our population has access to all of the goods and services that they mentioned. I feel that reviewing this allowed me to see that although we have put a lot of resources in the reach of our population, many people continue to struggle to maintain the basic needs.  Because resources are available to people, does not mean that they can afford to have them.  Personally speaking, I am one of those middle class families that Dr. Cathy Grace discussed in our media resource this week.  I live in a nice home in a comfortable neighborhood drive a new car, but have to be concerned about if we can afford groceries every month.  There have been times when I have to play what I call the “bill lottery”, to determine what I will pay this month and let go for the next money that comes into the house.  Telephones are not a necessity when money is tight.  One little occurrence, such as a car needing repair or a bill going up, can cause our whole budget to go out of sync.  What I realize is although we are more fortunate than people in other countries. We are only one or two extra bills away from living in poverty ourselves. 

     Professionally, this has given me the opportunity to reflect on how I approach my students.  I feel that I understand the circumstances that they are coming from; however I know that sometimes I do not truly consider how hard their families may be having it right now.  Especially when it comes to purchasing materials for class assignments and projects, we are lucky to have paper and pencil for all students daily.

http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTLACREGTOPPOVANA/Resources/840442-1291127079993/IOH_Colombia_2010.pdf

“The Effects of Poverty on the Early Childhood Community” (approximate length: 13 minutes). Conversation with Dr. Cathy Grace (Director of Early Childhood Development, Children’s Defense Fund). Retrieved from Walden University Course Page.

The Harlem Children's Zone

http://www.hcz.org/home

The beginning of the Children's Zone^®

In the early 1990s, HCZ ran a pilot project that brought a range of support services to a single block. The idea was to address all the problems that poor families were facing: from crumbling apartments to failing schools, from violent crime to chronic health problems.
HCZ created a 10-year business plan, then to ensure its best-practice programs were operating as planned, HCZ was in the vanguard of nonprofits that began carefully evaluating and tracking the results of their work. Those evaluation results enabled staff to see if programs were achieving their objectives and to take corrective actions if they were not.
In 1997, the agency began a network of programs for a 24-block area: the Harlem Children's Zone Project. In 2007, the Zone Project grew to almost 100 blocks. Today the Children's Zone^® serves more than 8,000 children and 6,000 adults. Overall, the organization serves more than 10,000 children and more than 7,400 adults.  The FY 2010 budget for the agency overall is over $75 million.

A history of innovation
Over the years, the agency introduced several ground-breaking efforts: in 2000, The Baby College^® parenting workshops; in 2001, the Harlem Gems^® pre-school program; also in 2001, the HCZ Asthma Initiative, which teaches families to better manage the disease; in 2004, the Promise Academy, a high-quality public charter school; and in 2006, an obesity program to help children stay healthy.
Under the visionary leadership of its President and CEO, Geoffrey Canada, HCZ continues to offer innovative, efficiently run programs that are aimed at doing nothing less than breaking the cycle of generational poverty for the thousands of children and families it serves.

I have subscribed to the newsletter for the Harlem Children's Zone and this week the newsletter included information about the CEO, Geoffrey Canada appearing on NBC Nightly News to discuss education, poverty and the budget.  The newsletter also included an article about Prince donating $1 million to Harlem Children's Zone as well as a a video article aobut the early childhood program entitled "Voices from Harlem: Early Childhood".  The video is a short video that allows followers to see how the program is benefiting children and also discusses the Baby College, The Three-Year-Old Journey and the Harlem Gems Pre-K classes.  The children are precious! The center is child centered and demonstrates that children are learning through discovery and exploration.  I hope that everyone will take the opportunity to look at the articles and videos.

My perception…..

In many communities today we are witnessing a decline in the support children have for their educational and developmental journeys.  Over my adult life I have discovered that the ultimate solution to our current educational state is to provide children with the best foundation they can receive from birth to age 5.  The Harlem Children’s Zone is the perfect example of how one organization can start out on a small level and over the years impact the whole community.  I am interested in this program because I see how it has made a difference in a community that society had given up on.  Today, parents are battling to get their children into this program from the moment they are born.  This is a huge compliment to the program.  What would the world be like if all parents were doing all they could to get their children the best education possible?  Parents are dedicated to the success of their children and abide by the guidelines to insure that their students are excelling.  I am excited by this ideal and hope to learn how I can create such an opportunity within my own community.

Establishing Professional Contacts and Resources in the Early Childhood Field

This week our assignment was to make contact with two people in other countries that work or are interested in early childhood education.  Over the course of our class we are to discuss trends and issues that are affecting early childhood education with our two new contacts in order to gain a new perspective of issues as they relate to people around the world.  I am excited to establish my contacts.

To begin making contact with persons from around the world I went to the Global Alliance of NAEYC website provided in our weekly resources list.  I actually chose five email addresses and sent out a brief message explaining our assignment and my desire to establish contact with professionals in other parts of the world.  I have not received a message back from anyone yet, but I am hopeful that I will receive a response soon.

The website that I have chosen to follow for this course is the Harlem Children's Zone.  When I saw this listed as one of the choices I was curious to follow the link.  Last year I saw a documentary on 60 minutes about a school that was started in Harlem where students were accepted through a lottery because so many people wanted their children to enroll in the school.  Parents of newborn were already registering their babies.  This is the type of program that I am interested in starting. I want to develop a high quality program that will make a huge positive impact in our community that everyone will want our children to be accepted.  I am excited to be able to learn more about the Harlem Children's Zone and to share it with my classmates as we proceed through the next 8 weeks.

Harlem Children’s Zonehttp://www.hcz.org/ 


The Global Alliance of NAEYC has e-mail addresses for early childhood professionals worldwide:http://www.naeyc.org/resources/partnership/globalalliance

My Connections to Play

MY CONNECTIONS TO PLAY                             

Favorite  Quotes                             

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father.

Roger von Oech
Contemporary American creativity guru

When children pretend, they’re using their imaginations to move beyond the bounds of reality. A stick can be a magic wand. A sock can be a puppet. A small child can be a superhero.

Fred Rogers
American children’s television host
1928–2003

These two quotes reflect the way that I feel about play.  Necessity is definitely the mother of invention, as a child I had to create many objects to complete my play because the item that I needed; such as a kitchen set, or a new dress for Barbie, were not available to me.  Play is what encourages necessity in childhood and is what gives life to the ideals and use of imagination.  Mr. Rogers says that play is what moves a child beyond the restraints of reality.  I absolutely agree. My imagination took me on so many adventures and journeys in my younger days; I could not imagine a childhood where play wasn’t as fun as mine. Not having store bought toys allowed me to use my imagination and creativity to produce objects to complete our play themes.  I remember using leaves as cabbage and mud pies were hamburgers. We improvised when we wanted to play basketball by playing on a dirt court and nailing a bicycle rim to a board for a hoop. How many children today would know how to do that?

My parents are to thank for all of the “adventures” my siblings and I went on.  Every day we were sent outside to play.  My Mom would help us to create items when we were playing and provided us with materials with which we could make pretend objects from.  She was the best Mother a child could ask for.  My father, the stern parent, was also a firm believer in going outside to play.  I think that his motive was simply peace and quiet more than to benefit us children. However, without him forcing us to stay outside, we may have missed the opportunities we were given to pretend.  I know that the playing we were involved in as children had a large impact on our ability to create, imagine and problem solve today.

The similarity I see between children today and myself is that we all love to play.  The differences are many. When ‘thrown’ outside to play we did not argue and complain, instead we found games to play and invented what we needed to do so.  Today, children are stuck in front of game systems and televisions for longer periods of time.  They do not have to make items to play with because most of them have any toy they would like.  Instead of planning and creating items to play with, they have store bought items.  Today’s students are missing out on problem solving skills that I feel will be directly linked to the fact that they have not had the opportunity to use their imaginations to explore their environments.

Public Health Measures and the impact on Child Development

Infant mortalilty has improved dramatically since 1950.  With public health measures influencing laws, contagious diseases, and cultural norms the number of children that die before age 5 has been reduced worldwide.  One way that has helped improve the overall health of children is immunizations.  Immunization is when a small inactive virus is introduced to the body either by shot, swallowing or inhalation in order to trigger the body to create an antibody against the virus.  According to J.P. Baker in 2000, “Immunization is said to have had a greater impact on human morality reduction and population growth than any other public health intervention besides clean water”.

Thanks to immunizations the world has seen success with eradicating smallpox and polio, as well as causing an almost complete disappearance in measles.  Immunizations are not only for protecting children from the disease, but from the complications that are associated with these diseases as well.

As a parent I decided to keep my children’s immunizations on target and to have them updated as necessary.  Over the years I have heard the rumors that some immunizations were responsible for such things as autism and also resulted in childrens deaths.  However, I felt that not getting them the vaccines would be more of a risk than any complication that may occur from the vaccines.  My mother had all of us vaccinated and we all are healthy adults.  What kind of parent would I be if I did not give my own children the same consideration?

Around the world, and even among different cultures with in the U.S., there are different views on immunizations.  Also, in different countries the availability to immunizations causes many parents not to have their child immunized.   One could hardly blame parents in third world nations who are more likely to not have the opportunity to immunize their children, for not doing so.  Sometimes I think as Americans we forget that many of people around the world do not have all the conveniences that we are afforded in the United States.  Even in some of the poorest communities here in the U. S. there are families who are not able to afford medical attention for their children.  We have to understand the environment, culture and socioeconomic situation of every individual case to determine the availability to immunizations and to understand a parent’s decision to immunize their child.

For this article I have chosen to discuss immunization practices in Nigeria.  According to information I obtained from the UNICEF website and BioMed Central Infectious Diseases website, Nigeria is ranked 2^nd overall and 17^th when ranked in children under 5, in infant mortality.  The country is far behind goals set by the Millenium Development Goals Report which has set goals for all countries to reach in child immunizations.  According to the BioMed Central website, the country  may not meet the goals set for 2015, that is unless the current trend is reversed.  In Nigeria progress is slow because there is inequitable access to services and there are deficient vaccine supplies and equipments.   Because of the lack of availability to immunization services, disease trend continue.  For example,  Measles were responsible for 5 percent of deaths in children in Africa, half of these deaths occurred in Nigeria.  Nigeria is among the ten countries in the world with vaccine coverage rates below 50 percent .  In third world countries, education of mothers on immunizations is also a problem.   Although some parents might understand that the risk to their child dying is higher without the immunizations, there are either not enough of the vaccines available or the sites providing the vaccines are not within the reasonable vicinity of the family.

In closing I would like to comment on a quote from our text, “No one notices when things go right”(Bortz, 2005, p.389).  A doctor stated this as a reason why parents in America are not having their children immunized properly.  I think this is an example of our society as a whole, not only where immunizations are concerned.  We as Americans are so privileged and have come so far within a few generations that we no longer see the importance of the simple procedures that have made our lives so comfortable.  Because we are not seeing the affects first hand of diseases such as polio, small pox, diphtheria, and chicken pox we no longer fear the diseases.  Our reading for this week shared a story of chicken pox where the parents decided not to have their child immunized. Well the little girl contracted chicken pox, but was only a carrier, and when she went home her father, age 36, who had also never been immunized contracted chicken pox.  Because of complications from the chicken pox he died .  This family resided in Kansas which was one of a few states that did not require children to be vaccinated, so no one in the man’s family had ever been vaccinated.  What I learned from this week’s reading is that we could all have had this experience if vaccinations were not mandated by our states.  I don’t think that many of us would have been vaccinated if it had not been enforced. I am grateful that the government has intervened and made it possible for every child to be vaccinated her in the United States.  It is unfortunate that some parents choose not to have their children vaccinated.  I think that the quote from the doctor is most important for people who make this choice to hear.  Because we as a society are not witnessing the deaths of children due to diseases and complications from these awful diseases, they do not see the importance.  Unfortunately, they may have to witness the death of a loved one firsthand before they begin to understand. 

Njoku, Geofforey.  At a glance: Nigeria. Retrieved from Unicef.org November 12, 2010. http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/nigeria_36211.html

Berger, Kathleen. The Developing Person through Childhood.  2009. New York

Educational Quotes

Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.  ~Roger Lewin

Children should be given the opportunity to explore and discover the answers to questions on their own. Our job is to make sure they have the opportunity to explore and to lead them to the right path of discovery when necessary. 

We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.  ~Stacia Tauscher

It is important to acknowledge that children are little people trying to make sense of the world around them.  The best thing we can do for our children is to allow them to discover, ask questions and to discuss with them the world around them.  Let the children play, that is how they make sense of the world.
You can learn many things from children.  How much patience you have, for instance.  ~Franklin P. Jones

Children are so enlightening.  Take time and observe the children in your lives. You will learn what they think about the world and the people in their lives, sometimes it is a real eye opening experience.

You are worried about seeing him spend his early years in doing nothing.  What!  Is it nothing to be happy?  Nothing to skip, play, and run around all day long?  Never in his life will he be so busy again.  ~Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, 1762

Children learn through play.  Play is not a mindless activity. Perhaps it is adults that need a lesson in learning.

Children seldom misquote.  In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said.  ~Author Unknown

I love this quote. Children are like little tape recorders.  They are always listening and learning, so becareful of what you say and do. YOu are the role model for children.

While we try to teach our children all about life,
Our children teach us what life is all about.
~Angela Schwindt

What can I say about this quote?  It says it all.

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.  ~Frederick Douglass

The time to make a difference in the lives of the human race is when they are small.  If we enstow in them what they need to develop healthy minds and souls they will grow to be fine individuals.

If you haven't time to respond to a tug at your pants leg, your schedule is too crowded.  ~Robert Brault

Children deserve our attention, arrange your schedule to give them what they need; time, love and patience.

Testing or Intelligence?

As a student of the public school systems I feel it important to say that the education that I received was excellent.  I began school in 1978 and graduated in 1991, the only “standardized tests” we incurred to my recollection was the California Achievement Tests.  I believe that my teachers gave me the education that I needed to make a career for myself without all the pressures of testing.

With this being said, I believe that there has to be a standard education system throughout the country. Children in the rural parts of North Carolina should be receiving the same education that children from urban Michigan are receiving.  The problem that I have with testing is, it will take at least one generation to make all children all over the United States on the same level.  We must take into consideration that all children are not coming to the public schools at the same developmental levels.  They do not and have not had the same experiences and therefore it is unfair to expect children from all regions to miraculously “get on the same level”.

 As a teacher I struggle everyday with leveling the playing field for my students. The “No Child Left Behind” ideal is a nice thought.  But how are we going to teach our curriculum and get children where they need to be when we have some children that are developmentally years behind the others.  I am expected to teach particular concepts in x-amount of weeks and no more.  If the students do not understand it then we will have to revisit it throughout the year.  This is ridiculous in my opinion.  If my students as a whole are having difficulty, then I should be able to make that call for the sake of my students.  Instead I must push forward and teach new concepts.  Testing has put so much pressure on schools and teachers that we are not doing what is best for the children, because in the end there are some students that we have to “leave behind” so that we meet our required percentages in testing.

Do I believe we should be held to certain standards, yes indeed.  All students worldwide should be taught the same concepts at the same age. Do I believe that standardized testing is important? Yes I believe it is important that there are checks to be sure our students are learning the required skills.  However at the same time it has made teaching and even learning a rush to the finish line.  Teachable moments are wonderful, but as a teacher we had better pray that it fits into our deadlines.

Standardized Testing In Europe 

Beginning in the late 1970’s in the United States, high schools began using exit examinations to ensure that students were meeting the minimum state requirements for graduation.  By 2001 all states were implementing some type of graduation exam.  Today testing is based on the curriculum and performance standards have been developed in all fifty states. 

In European countries, examinations based on state standards have been common. Different regions within Europe, however, handle the testing differently.  In France they are set by the state and conducted and scored by the schools. In the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Romania and Slovenia the tests are also set by the state, however they are conducted and scored by external or semi-independent agencies.  The Russian Federation not only conducts and scores their tests, they are also set by the schools.  There tests are in accordance with the government guidelines but there has been no attempt to standardized them or make them comparable.  The tests are strongly curriculum based, since the objective is to certify that individuals have reached a specified level of learning.  Students are allowed to retake the tests if they fail, and the tests are created at medium-low stakes.  In the Netherlands, the weightings are 50-50 with in school performance and examinations. This allows students to show their skills in ways that are not easily measurable in the examination format.

Gale Encyclopedia of Education. Encyclopedia of Education. Testing: Standardized Tests and Educational Policy. Copyright © 2002 by The Gale Group, Inc.