Getting to Know Your International Contacts-Part 2

As I have read and communicated with those internationally, I see that it is our responsibility as humans and educators to meet the needs of all children we come in contact with.  We must insure collaborative universal planning and implementation or guidelines, and rally for all governments to support and strengthen schools and families.  We must guarantee that all children grow and develop to their full potential while they are being provided high quality, accessible, affordable early education care.  The global initiatives states, early childhood development, child mental health, and children in crisis and conflict situations as areas to guide us to increasing our understanding and the importance of investing and collaborating with others towards a more integrated system using strategies which promote early childhood development.

In discussing these issues with my international contacts, I found out that the international group that Judith Wagner works with and serves as president for the U.S. Chapter, OMEP, is really interested in all of these issues, but globally, prescribed quality standards and equity issues are ahead of school readiness on their radar screen.  School readiness is not of much concern in places where there is no school, or not a school providing a quality education within the given environments.  Access to school is so unequal in various parts of the world and even more unequal when we think about gender equity.  The Millennium Development Goal addresses the need for universal primary education, with equity — specifically gender equity. 

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At the OMEP World Assembly last month, they struggled with a request from UNICEF to develop a universal or global program quality measure.  It was decided after much discussion with people from majority world (poor world) and minority world (and other developed countries) that it is not possible to develop a list of specific criteria to measure quality across contexts. They took the issue of sanitation and hygiene, and then even narrowed that to hand washing. For example, teaching little kids in California to wash their hands properly is one thing, and an important one at that. But how can we measure the quality of what we do here with hand washing, with the same instrument we would use in Kenya or Nigeria where there is no clean water and no soap?  They even studied the role of traditional play.  If they were to use the same instrument or criterion to measure the quality of play experiences in a preschool in the US and Sweden, the US would not score so well, but the comparison would be acceptable, since the two countries have relatively similar discourses around play.  However, that measure would not work well at all in, say, Hong Kong, where there is no space for outside yards and where most parents  (and most teachers) think play is a waste of time.

Jane Kurtz, who works with EthiopiaReads, stated that this country struggles with all issues that affect young children (availability of clean water and medical help to access to books).  Here in the US, we have parents that are actively engaged in reading to their children, starting at preschool age if not before.  However it is rare in Ethiopia for homes to have books, where parents cannot read.

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References:

Harvard University’s “Global Children’s Initiative” website, http://developingchild.harvard.edu/initiatives/global_initiative/

Wagner, J., personal communication, July 26, 2011.

Kurtz, J., personal communication, July 26, 2011.