There are hundreds of research
articles around the world that talks about academic disparity between children
across socio-economic groups, geographic, family types and cultural groups.
Throughout my years being an educator and studying to become one, I learnt to
accept that such disparity is usually common in older children (5 – 7 years
onwards) and usually it takes tremendous efforts and time to recuperate the
missing lapses. However, I was wrong. The gap begins at toddlerhood and
intensifies each passing year.
Of course, disparity among the early
childhood years is evident in Singapore as well. With the qualifications of
parents and varied quality of care and education available across the nation;
there is no standardized early childhood education at the moment. Hence, every
child is embarking at a different starting line. These starting line are,
however, subjected to a societal flaw at how much parents are willing to pay
for early education and care.
After directly working with
the infant and toddlers and their families in the past year, I learnt that the gap starts at
two. I am not advocating for parents to
enroll their inquisitive toddlers into enrichment classes or to pay truckloads
of money for high quality early childhood education. My intention is to highlight the importance of good teachers for the youngest children. Knowing that the gap
begins at two (and sometimes even earlier), the role of the edu-carer and educator is extremely important.
Their job is to provide developmentally appropriate materials, intentional facilitation and
pedagogues to scaffold the entire class to progress forward, while paying extra
focus on the lagging child(ren). Based on my own experience, I worked with several passionate and experienced educators to suspect learning disabilities/learning needs/self-regulation issues at toddlerhood and worked with families and
therapists to devise strategies to include them seamlessly within the class. Without time lapses, these toddlers received help early and was able to progress alongside with their same-aged peers.
Currently, in Singapore, there are grading
to ensure teacher quality and needless to say, our best teachers are deployed
to work with older children (4-6 years of age). This arrangement works perfect
for our society as citizens are programmed to know that ‘preschools prepare each
child for primary school’. However, we should promote the ‘inverted pyramid of teaching qualifications’ within our local preschool system. Made famous by Finland and Switzerland’s early childhood education system, it refers to having the best teachers for the youngest age group. Studies has shown that conscious and intentional infants and toddlers teachers grooms healthy, well-adjusted, curious children who displays strong learning abilities in their school life.
Moving forward, I wish for parents, educators and policy makers to
know that preschools prepare your child for life. I wish for
policy makers to understand the opportunity cost of deploying great teachers
with the older children than the birth to three. Lastly, for tertiary
institutions/teachers training schools to reevaluate modules offers for
teachers-to-be. Having been through the system, I wish tertiary institutions
provided me and my peers more hands-on experiences with infant and toddlers
than just theoretical knowledge. Lastly, I wish for parents to know the windows of learning opportunities through play and exploration in the early years than just the preschoolers/school-aged.
In my humble opinion, for the
betterment of early education in Singapore, such changes must be done
progressively and intentionally.