Some business leaders in an International report contended that “Investing in Early Childhood Education is one of the wisest things we can make!”
Considering the fact that “Children from 0 to 5 can’t fight for themselves to get a better start at life,” they say that this is not just an economic issue, but the moral justice issue of our time.
To align with the promotion of Universal Kindergarten, the Philippine Educational System instigated the Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) program. Supported by UNICEF, such program intends to deliver the best start for all children and to contribute to the Global platform for Primary Education. Collaborations have been in occurrence with government & private associates to promote a holistic approach to early learning and to bring in, series of actions for each child’s progress. Parental Involvement is also enhanced, in coordination with educational advocates, so as to appropriately aid the children in their first five years’ crucial development.
However, despite the investment of time, treasure and effort towards the emerging Four Themes in Early Childhood Education, it turns out that we are still facing major issues that need to be addressed amidst pressing times in terms of:  the ethic of social reform,  the importance of childhood,  transmitting values and  a sense of professionalism.
On  Ethic of social reform, we are currently experiencing inequities & mediocre child care. There is still the deep need for social justice since the goal of closing the achievement gap between disadvantaged and minority pupils have not been realized as of yet.
On  The Importance of childhood, sad to say, children of today have no choice but endure “an endangered childhood” because there is so much emphasis on survival, while kids are chaotically exposed to reality and adult experiences. Families, where they belong are under different forms of stress such as restoration of relationships, too busy working parents who rarely have quality time with them, parents who are working their way to the edge just to fight poverty, and the likes.
On  Transmitting values, adults as we are: parents and stakeholders, we more often than not forget that “Early learning is powerful!” In a majority of instances, we are caught unaware by our own reactions and viewpoints along with the confronts of media’s exposure of violence, tragedy & social diversity – with which, children are subconsciously developing some kind of behavior, if not deep scar or trauma, especially if we’ve reacted unconstructively.
On  Professionalism, not many of our stakeholders are persistent in an advocacy of passionately fulfilling “a better start at life” service in the field of early childhood. Teachers are not given proper and significant training to help them deal with children when differences arise between the cultural patterns of the home, community and those of the school’s.
Fantasy and reality in the minds of young kids are not separate things. Innocent as they are, they have that strong expectation that adults will respond to what they need – in which case, we’ve got to harness the discrepancies between their make-believe and reality, otherwise, we are not giving them THE BEST START that they should get. However, being confronted with the above-mentioned matters in reality, wouldn’t we worry that we may disappoint the youngs of our time? Would you agree that this is more of a moral justice issue rather than economic?
Being both A FACILITATOR OF LIFE and a CURRICULARIST, would it then still be wise to Invest in Early Childhood Education? Please share your idea.
If we are not prepared, we are going to spend the rest of our time REPAIRING!