International Issues in ECE

Global Gathering in Moscow Put Spotlight on Early Childhood Issues

On September 27-29, 2010 the first ever “World Conference on Early Childhood Care and Education: Building the Wealth of Nations”, was held in Moscow.  The conference brought together neuroscientists, high level government leaders, policy makers, and professionals from other science and education fields to attempt to put early childhood education and education in the spotlight as an imperative human development policy.

In 2000, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), developed the Millennium Development Goals (MDG).  The goals that were agreed upon were; to end extreme poverty and hunger, ensure that every child worldwide completes at least a primary education, and to reduce child mortality by two-thirds.  The goals were to be reached by 2015. As the deadline is quickly approaching the government leaders acknowledge that early childhood care and education is key to meeting several of the Millennium Development Goals.

Dr. Jack Shonkoff, director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, was a keynote speaker at the conference.  Dr. Shonkoff shared with the attendees that current research on brain science human genome and behavioral and social sciences is “demonstrating how healthy development in the earliest years of life builds the foundations of successful adaptation and effective learning that lead to better outcomes in academic achievement, responsible citizenship, lifelong health, and economic and human development”.(Center, 2010)

Opportunities for nations to discuss policy and practice were also allotted at this year’s conference.  Topics of discussion were country cases, policy challenges, innovative strategies and best practices, and integration and coordination across sectors.  UNICEF reported in 2006 that 30 governments worldwide had established national early childhood development policies nationwide.  However, more than half of the world’s governments remain without “formal policy or coordination mechanisms in place related to early childhood development”(Center, 2010). 

The article closed with a statement from Dr. Mmantsetsa Marope, the director of the Division of Basic Education at UNESCO.  She stated that “Early Childhood Care and Education is an unshakable foundation for the development of the human capital required for higher value-added productivity, sustainable growth, competiveness…and ultimately more equitable and politically stable societies”(Center, 2010).  What a great statement to close an article or a conference on.  Indeed giving children the best foundation with which to develop means that they receive a high quality of care in the early years of development.  Success begins with the foundation.

Three new insights that I gained from reading the article this week are that around the world the desire to create an education system that provides children with the best opportunities for success is linked directly to the early childhood care and education.  As I read the article, I found myself wondering in third world nations where the conditions are so bad that is amazing that the government is concerned with early childhood development.  I definitely agree that in order for the circumstances to change in economically challenged areas, there has to be improvements to the education and development of the younger generation.  The second topic that interested me was the discussion by Dr. Shonkoff about the research from other fields.  This is what we learned about last week in class.  It seems that other professions are supporting the efforts of the early childhood field with valuable research on development and statistics over time.  With all the research and support that has been give to Early Childhood Education; I do not understand why we are fighting for funding.  The research shows that the hope of the world is in the early years of child development.  The third item that I wanted to share with others is that there is an organization for Early Childhood Education through the United Nations and that they have set goals in the field of early childhood care and development globally.  I had not heard of this organization, and to be honest I have not even considered that all nations are interested in early childhood education.  I guess I just assumed that with the economic troubles and wars around the world that people were not interested in education.  I enjoyed reading the goals or Millennium Development goals, and hope that everyone takes a moment to learn more about this initiative.

Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. (2010). Global children’s initiative. Retrieved from http://developingchild.harvard.edu/initiatives/global_initiative/ 

Moscow Conference Article

http://developingchild.harvard.edu/index.php/topics/global_child_development/moscow-conference/

Education As an Investment

Education As an Investment

 This week I chose to review the website and newsletter of the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER).  There are many articles of interests to me this week as we are discussing early childhood education being referred to as an “investment opportunity”.  Some of the headlines displayed on the home page are “Head Start parents urge lawmakers to preserve funding”, “Editorial: Smarter—Boosters need plan to save preschool programs” and “Editorial: Early childhood education gets boost form business leaders”.   The overall message is clear, early education programs are in danger of more budget cuts, just as business leaders and politicians are receiving information that investing in early childhood education would show major payoffs in years to come. 

     “Head Start parents urge lawmakers to preserve funding” an editorial in the “Billings Gazette” shares with reader s the fear of budget cuts to the Head Start program nationwide.  According to the article the 2011 Appropriations Bill that has passed the House and is awaiting approval from the Senate recommends cuts to the program that would close 16,000 Head Start classrooms, and would affect 218,000 low-income children. (Kemmick, 2011)  Ron Haskins, co-director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution stated that the Department of Health and Human Services completed a study last year of the Head Start program and concluded that a large number of the programs were so ineffective that “they do little or nothing to boost child development and learning”.(Kemmick, 2011)  According to Haskins, President Obama has ordered a review of all Head Start programs over the next three years, those under performing programs would have to compete for funding with other early childhood programs.

     This article is in direct conflict with what we have been reviewing in class this week.  Research shows that quality early childhood programs are improving the success rates of children in school.  Although there are budget cuts to programs instead of the funding being invested into the early childhood programs, I can appreciate that the government is researching which programs are effective prior to enforcing the budget cuts.  I believe that programs that are not being providing children with quality programs to benefit their development should have their funding cut, or have to compete for the funding.  Of course, I would be interested in how the researchers are determining the “success” of the programs. 

In the article “Early childhood education gets boost from the business leaders”, business leaders in Oklahoma have created a coalition to promote initiatives in early childhood programs.  Blake Wade, the president of the coalition Oklahoma Business Roundtable, stated that “by focusing more dollars in the early years, we stand to save millions in future tax dollars”. (World’s Editorial Writers, 2011)  The business leaders agree that from an economic standpoint, early childhood education is not an instant payback.  Wade states however that, “there is a huge undeniable reward; Oklahoma needs a highly skilled workforce, and that will only happen if children are prepared to learn.”

     This article supports our lesson this week.  Business leaders are becoming active in the education system because they are aware that the workforce has become less adequate over the years.  It is in their best interest to become active in education to help educators reform the system.  This discussion has led me to believe that the “all children need to feel successful” attitude that educators are forced to cater to the children today, is only hurting the students when they arrive in the workforce.  This is going to be an interesting issue to see resolved.  I feel “old school” education will be revived to undo the damage that “learning has to be fun” teaching we are seeing today.

The National  Institute For Early Education Research. 

http://nieer.org/

Kemmick, Ed.  Head Start Parents Urge Lawmakers to Preserve Funding. The Billings Gazette| March 25, 2011. Retrieved March 26, 2011.

http://billingsgazette.com/news/local/article_39630055-2795-508c-a25f-3ffd4f9974f8.html

World’s Editorial Writers. Early childhood education gets boost from business leaders. http://www.tulsaworld.com/opinion/article.aspx?subjectid=61&articleid=20110323_61_A14_Onethi547468

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