{"id":5853,"date":"2020-05-04T11:27:13","date_gmt":"2020-05-04T10:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/?p=5853"},"modified":"2021-06-15T16:08:41","modified_gmt":"2021-06-15T15:08:41","slug":"beyond-covid-19-rethinking-early-years-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/beyond-covid-19-rethinking-early-years-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond COVID-19: Rethinking Early Years Education"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As the government considers how and when to reopen our schools, Wendy Cobb and Tom Troppe explore the topic and discuss whether early years education should be re-evaluated. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Esther\nMcVey has suggested that reopening nurseries must be a priority to ensure children\u2019s development is not damaged<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently we\nhave noticed an outpouring of anxiety expressed on Twitter and Facebook as parents\nstruggle to balance the requirements of working from home and schooling their\nchildren. The mainstream media echo these sentiments to the point of suggesting\nthat being at home with children is \u2018breaking parents\u2019<\/a>.  From our\ncontexts (we were both previously stay at home parents, in America and England respectively),\nthis looks like a rapidly hardening social construct of childhood, in which\nchildren are cast as burdensome, or someone else\u2019s responsibility, or even\nunwelcome in their own home. Such a construction couldn\u2019t be further from our\nexperiences, especially feeling, as we both do, the pain of being so far from\nour children during this pandemic.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While many\nfamilies seem more desperate than ever for the help of the Early Years Sector, we\nwould like to gently push back against the suggestion that children\u2019s\ndevelopment is damaged at home. According to the Department for Education<\/a>, the Home Learning Environment is\ninstead a key predictor for a child\u2019s future success. At the end of the day, we\ndon\u2019t want an accumulation of well-earned frustration expressed on social media\nto cause us all to lose sight of this fact\u2014or of the joy that a lot of us find\nin spending time with our children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McVey, of\ncourse, is right to place such a high importance on the Early Childhood\nEducation (ECE) sector, but is the importance some parents are placing on\nreopening school places so much about the value of the educational opportunity\nor something else?   Being a stay at home\nmum\/dad has to a large extent been demonised in recent years amid warnings of\nthe dangers of \u2018motherism\u2019, or what Sigman described as a prejudice against stay-at-home mothers<\/a>. \nBeing a working mum\/dad has become more than a norm, it is now an\nexpectation to do our duty, in much the same way that being \u2018locked in\u2019 with our\nchildren is a requirement under current Government guidance.  Of course, we all feel a responsibility to\nplay our part for the national good during these challenging times, but at what\nexpense to our children?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McVey\nseems to be suggesting that children\u2019s early education in nurseries is the\ndevelopmental ideal; the counter argument being that young children are best\nnurtured and educated in the loving confines of the home.  Of course, there is no one ideal, neither is the\ndecision about where our children are educated a simple question of parental\nchoice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early\nChildhood Educators have always been \u2018essential workers\u2019 and like care workers\nhave for too long been undervalued and underpaid.  The current crisis has made us think a lot\nabout how, at the University, we prepare people to serve this part of the\neducation \u2018industry\u2019 and how the ECE sector is being cast into a spotlight for re-evaluation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\nseems to us to be a delicate balance between protecting the economics of the\nECE sector– and possibly even making overdue improvements to pay and\nrecognition of these workers given these popular feelings of desperation –and\nrecognizing the abilities and joys of the parents who express willingness and\ndesire to develop a robust home learning environment. Ultimately, we aim for an\nunderstanding of children not as burdens, but as collaborators who unite\nschools and parents in the building of a better future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tom Troppe\nis a Doctoral Student and Wendy Cobb is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of\nEducation<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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