Early Childhood Internationally

The education of young children is an important concept throughout the world.  Unfortunately, the international early childhood community faces many of the same issues that we do.  These issues include poverty, equity, and excellence of care and education for children and young families.  Knowing that these issues affect children around the world has changed me both personally and professionally. 

            One personal consequence of this knowledge for me is that I no longer believe that I am doing my duty or fulfilling my role as early childhood educator if I do little to nothing to help children around the world.  For many years, I thought that if I was the best teacher possible to the children that I had I was making a difference.  While this is true, it is not the full story.  As we have learned in our course all children, deserve the best experience possible.  As an educator, I should be finding ways to stand up for children not just in my classroom but also around the world and early childhood education itself.  I am not sure how I can carry out this mission but I am committed to trying to do something about it.

            A professional consequence of this knowledge is that I am more aware of how important the concept of equity and excellence is.  Many children and families simply do not have access to quality programs.  Professionally, I feel that I should be advocating for ways to improve and increase access to early childhood programs for children around the world. 

            Finally, as we have studied the concepts of quality I have been asking questions of my program and center about where our responsibility to quality ends.  My program is a wonderful program, which has earned many wonderful accolades.  However, our concern for quality stops at our front door.  My questions to administration includes questions like should we not be concerned about the programs next door, down the block, and even across the state?  It is not the programs I am concerned about it is the children and families that they serve.  Unfortunately, my state is not a state known for wonderful early childhood programs.  Although this is improving, we still have a long way to go.  I see it as my and my program’s responsibility to strive to improve the quality rating for all children.  How we would do, this is up for discussion but at least the question has been raised.

            There is an old quote that says, “It takes a village to raise a child;” well listening to our presidential candidates we know our economy is a global economy.  Therefore, I believe that our children are global children. What affects one group affects others, if not all.  I believe that the early childhood field should work together more cohesively around the world.  I believe that information should be shared more frequently and with more concern to all parts of the world.  We should focus our efforts as a field on improving access to quality education for all children, not just the select few.