HOW EARLY EDUCATION SHAPES OUR CHILDREN – FOR BETTER OR WORSE

There’s an old saying that the path of a bird in flight or a fish in water cannot be visually traced, and neither can the love for a man in a woman’s heart. In a similar way, the imprint an early childhood education teacher can make on the life of a child is equally ‘invisible’, but often very influential.

Almost all of us can recall a favorite teacher that they had, starting from elementary school. We can remember the influence that he or she had on us, because from the age of six we are conscious of our environment. We remember the best teacher we had in high school – or the worst. We carry this with us for the rest of our lives; often this experience impacts our choice of career or profession, and some of us go even one step further, and we follow the legacy of their teacher in our hearts - but this legacy is often related to our social life, as we are in reality more influenced by the teacher’s social ‘aura’ and less so by what they taught us. Because we remember we can recall and explain the influence these teachers had on us – but the influence of a teacher in the early years of our lives can be even more profound, both in a positive or negative way; however, we typically don’t recall it.

At this age, a teacher’s influence penetrates at every level of our being, socially as well as educationally. This places an enormous responsibility on the shoulders of the teacher, but this is very often not recognized, not even by the teachers themselves. How often do early childhood educators not resort to having their children play in an unstructured way – this appears to make the job easy, and the children seem to love it. We know that children clearly prefer to learn at this age; they are dissatisfied by play-based learning, and then revolt by misbehaving. Intuitively they wish for success and want to achieve that through learning. Decades ago unstructured, play-based learning was more feasible, as children grew up among their peers of different ages; nowadays children are grouped in classes of similar ages, and no longer have the opportunity to learn from their older peers. Beyond the unstructured play teachers often engage in one-directional learning; a circle time is called for, and children sit in a group and listen mostly passively to the teacher. Those who can positively adjust to that situation are rewarded and encouraged; those who have a hard time to learn and absorb in that type of environment are criticized and blamed for misbehavior, and often lose their intuitive love of learning forever. These days there is a lot of talk about fact- or project-based education; that’s great, but do we have the teachers with the qualifications and desire to do so effectively? Between zero and six years of age, learning should be a reward, not a punishment. I have often seen teachers giving misbehaving children a choice; either act properly or I give you a serious job as a form of punishment. I prefer to turn that around; behave well, and if you do, I’ll give you a job as a reward.

Since I have observed and deeply believe that children are born to learn and that the most precious time to learn is exactly in our early years, as our capacity to learn is almost limitless - as long as we as teachers create the right type of structured environment, including our attitude itself. For example, if a child sees their teacher read a book when they wake up from their daily afternoon nap, it presents them with an unspoken example that is educational by itself.

The influence an early childhood educator can have on children can be enormously influential in a positive sense – but it can just as easily be applied in a negative way. In Dr. Montessori’s time, Mussolini understood this very well, and he approached Maria Montessori with the idea to create early childhood education program that would serve his own political interest to create a generation of fearless soldiers. Montessori categorically refused and this was one of the key reasons she left Italy for Western Europe.

If we want to create a hopeful future for our world it is imperative we have capable teachers who can positively touch and shape our children and therefore our future.