See text below.
EXCERPTS
It is a well known fact that in Vancouver - after real estate and perhaps dog walking - child care is the most popular topic of conversation between strangers who find themselves chatting at a social gathering. At playgrounds, it's all child care, all the time. I probably haven't had a playground conversation in three years that didn't end up on the topic of child care within a few sentences.
It's a phenomenon born of anxiety, I believe. Seems like anyone with pre-Grade 1 kids has some kind of pressing child care dilemma. They're either looking for a new nanny, or fretting about waiting lists at favourite daycares, juggling kindergarten plans or wondering what they'll manage to get for after-school care.
This results from many more parents having jobs away from home, of course. The two-parent, single-income family hasn't been the norm for 25 or 30 years. And while we evolve, somebody still has to look after the kids.
I've been thinking about this more lately, as the issue of full-day kindergarten has returned to the news in British Columbia. B.C. schools offer only half-day kindergarten, and the intent to explore expanding this was announced in the 2008 provincial Throne Speech. The Early Childhood Learning Agency was set up to investigate the matter, and has issued a consultation paper calling for the public's thoughts by the end of this week.
The earliest this could come into effect is 2009, and my son is going into half-day kindergarten this September, so I'm not affected one way or the other. But it seems to me, on the balance of information available, that the province should proceed with the plan for five-year-olds.
It might not entirely relieve the anxiety among my playground colleagues, since after-school care would remain an issue. But it has its own benefits. Significant research supports the idea that children who have been exposed to early education transition much more smoothly into Grade 1. This doesn't mean the kids have been in classrooms, only that they've been involved in learning through play supervised by people with training in early childhood education.
Many private daycares and even family child care centres provide this already, and those may remain the most appropriate settings for three- and four-year-olds. My own experience with a small family daycare has been extremely positive, with playtime and art work and field trips invariably organized around a learning theme. But not all families are lucky enough to get into places like that one. Daycare spaces are tight. And plenty of kids arrive in Grade 1, alongside all those who are counting and starting rudimentary reading already, who have never spelled a word in their lives.
But the real issue may be that the variance between students on the first day of grade school is greater now than it was when stay-at-home parents were more common. In my own distant childhood era - the sixties and seventies - parents didn't sweat early childhood education much. I remember being told early I had to go to university, long before I really understood what it was.
…
Now things are more competitive. Households with two working parents wouldn't be so common if things weren't. And so discrepancies in skills arise based on what parents are able to accomplish on their own and what kind of daycare services they're able to secure. Given that falling behind early is considered a great liability for children as they go forward in elementary school, the idea of full-day, learning-oriented play for kids in that crucial year before Grade 1 seems to have much merit.
There are counterarguments, of course. There are costs involved in setting up a significant new program and training the educators required. Existing daycares might also object that the province will erode their market by providing a substitute service.
But a market would remain for those private daycares that already provide excellent grade school preparation. And much like private schools, they would continue to offer an option to people who want a more personalized environment, or feel their child needs time in a smaller setting.
As for the cost, this has to be looked at as an investment with anticipated returns, not just for those anxious parents in the playgrounds, but for the more employable and productive graduates that would be eventually coming out of our school system.
Given that the provincial strategic plan declares as the first of its five "great goals" that it seeks to "make British Columbia the best-educated, most literate jurisdiction on the continent," and given that New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Quebec and Ontario either have full-day kindergarten for five-year-olds or have it in the works, it would seem we're falling behind.
- reprinted from the Globe and Mail