I can’t stop thinking about a small, somewhat disorganized classroom in a Lahore primary school annex where a teacher is kneeling on the ground with a tray of wooden blocks and seven four-year-olds. There are no worksheets. Don’t practice the alphabet. It’s just blocks, and she keeps asking in Urdu, “What do you think will happen if we put this one on top?” The world is still debating whether or not this type of scene qualifies as education, despite Friedrich Froebel sketching it out nearly 200 years ago.
The years from birth to roughly eight, or third grade in most systems, are covered by early childhood education, or ECE. Before you sit down and look at the numbers, that seems pretty straightforward. Worldwide, only about 40% of children between the ages of three and four attend any kind of early childhood education. It falls to one in four in sub-Saharan Africa. It rises to almost two-thirds in Latin America as a result of a wave of legislation that followed the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It’s not a subtle difference. It is continental.
The research isn’t really up for debate anymore, which makes the gap peculiar. Numerous studies spanning decades demonstrate that high-quality early childhood education leads to quantifiable improvements in social skills, cognitive ability, school readiness, and even adult earnings. For many years, the OECD has maintained that one of the most economical public investments a government can make is in high-quality early childhood education and care. The profits outweigh the expenditures. Preschool funding is still viewed as a soft expense, the kind that is cut first when revenues decline, in budget meetings from Washington to Islamabad.
The fact that there is no consensus on what early childhood education should entail is part of the problem. Two camps have been at odds for a long time. One school of thought, influenced by Piaget, Dewey, and Froebel, holds that play, exploration, and self-directed learning are the best ways for kids to learn. With early literacy and numeracy exercises incorporated into the day, the other advocates for organized academic preparation. It’s possible that both sides have some valid points, but teachers find it tiresome to watch policies change every few years, and they usually adapt anyhow.
The Reggio Emilia method, developed by Loris Malaguzzi in a small Italian town following World War II, is firmly in the first camp. There, teachers are referred to as co-learners rather than instructors. It sounds like a marketing slogan until you see it put into practice: children are thought to be capable, inquisitive, and full of potential. The curriculum itself is created by recording a child’s thoughts, sometimes using pictures or transcriptions of conversations. It moves slowly. It has to do with relationships. It is the antithesis of test preparation.
Pakistan has made a more subdued but genuine contribution to this discussion. Allama Iqbal Open University’s two-semester Postgraduate Diploma in Early Childhood Education is intended for parents, childcare managers, and preschool teachers who wish to gain a better understanding of how children truly develop. According to the university, ECE classes are now being offered in government schools. This is the kind of change in policy that doesn’t make headlines but has long-term effects. Additionally, there is a need for graduates overseas, as preschools in the Gulf, Canada, and the UK continue to hire qualified ECE professionals more quickly than universities can produce them.
When you consider all of this, you get the impression that early childhood education is one of those subjects that everyone agrees upon in theory but disregards in reality. The science is obvious. The economics are obvious. Kneeling next to a tower of blocks in those small classrooms, the teachers already know what they’re doing. It’s still unclear if the rest of us will catch up in time.
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