International

The first article I read was about Brazil trying to get the federal government to pass a congressional bill that would make it mandatory to fund an early childhood program for children ages 0 to 6.  Yet, like most countries this bill has lots of conflict surrounding the funding.  In Brazil, it is mandated that funding for education follows strict guidelines where 25% out of 60 goes to early childhood and then elementary education and the other 40 going to secondary education.  Brazil is challenging its government to invest in early childhood they understand the importance of educating the very young and promoting equity in their country.  Many officials are concerned that only the rich will have an education and that many poor families will not have an education nor understand the importance of getting one.  I am so fascinated by Brazil and their efforts; I would love to do an internship in their early childhood program. 

The second article I read was the quality improvement of preschool in Singapore.  This country actually in the 70’s try to implement a universal preschool for all children but the cost was too high so they turned it over to private sectors.  However, private sectors in Singapore are nonprofit agencies who are given subsidiaries to poor families to attend preschool in 2004 nearly 99% of the children’s population had attended 1 to 3 years of preschool.  The attendance to me is amazing so much that even poor countries such as Singapore knew that they needed to improve the quality of the children’s education.  The nonprofit organizations are making an effort with the help of the country to train and educate caregivers.  The outcome has been phenomenal as caregivers are highly educated and the quality of care has improved drastically.  Way to go Singapore! Oh and by the way the quality of care has been equity across the board for the majority of the country since the trainings have begun.

The last article was a short insert of implementing many languages into preschool and hiring educators that can speak multi languages to enhance the children’s culture and others who are from other countries.  I will be quite honest this article did not appeal to me it is often very hard to add culture in the classroom in terms of speaking it on a daily basis but to want educators to be fluent in many languages will make it even more difficult.  I know Spanish and speak it to my children in ways they can comprehend and reciprocate, but to add another one at this point for me would be a train wreck.  I love culture and discussing it and finding interesting ways to add it to the classroom but by no means could I speak it on a daily basis in many languages. 

In any thoughts ……none of these articles really pertained to my professionals goals in a huge sense except for advocating that all children receive quality care and learning and that my enhancement for broadening my education on other cultures has occurred.