The importance of Early Childhood Education

Early Childhood Education(ECE) is set to get more out of reach for families. The government plans to shift the cost for ECE over to providers, who will pass it onto parents. Professional, qualified teachers agree that cutting Early Childhood Education will harm the future of children. "The Government spending on early childhood education may have trebled, but New Zealand still lags behind the OECD average per capita expenditure. If it is reduced further, then quality will suffer." The New Zealand Educational Institute puts it bluntly, "The funding shortfall can only be met by parent fees, or cuts to quality.".

ECE gives children the chance to expand their minds, gain independence, get parents back into work and let children socialise with other children. The brains neural pathways are developed during this stage, their own information super highway. But if this highway isn't built properly it can cause collisions and tears later on in life.  ECE provides an enviornment rich with diversity and information to help them build their world view. Parents are the first teachers and ECE is not there to replace parents. It is there to support the child in building their world and giving parents the time to restructure theres.

"I hate onions! Why does the earth need onions anyway?" - Little girl at the supermarket I went to the other day, building her world.

Telling it like it is

In Social Work the Social Worker must make use of rapport. Rapport is about creating understanding and trust. It's the key to building relationships, which is what social work is all about. How can you help society if you can't build a connection with it? Rapport is a topic that people have written big books on. How to Win Friends and Influence People, Flirting For Success: The Art of Building Rapport, Talk to Anyone, blahblahblah General Self-Help book title about relationship building here.

Unfortunately Social Work is also about getting things done. This can mean upsetting the wonderful harmonious rapport you have with somebody. Or rocking the boat. How can you do this without tipping anyone or yourself overboard? How can you tell someone a fact that's hard for them to swallow but they need to hear it? It's a hard act and one even Social Workers on the job still learn about.

One way is to be upfront with them after you've shown to them that you have empathy. Being empathetic means being respectful, even if you disagree with them. It also means trying to understand where they're coming from, even if you think they've gone down the wrong path. But back to being upfront. You can tell the person that you have something important to say which could really bother them. Then lay it down and say why you think whatever you're thinking. Explain how it'll affect them and whatever or whoever they care about. You want to explain the truth clearly. You don't want it to be distorted by anybody's gossip.

This isn't counselling 101 and that method might not always work. But sometimes time is short and you might have something really impotant to say. I hope this post gave you some insight into dealing with tricky situations. Tricky situations sometimes require a trick themselves.

"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you -- tripping on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as Leif the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say, the whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness." - William Shakespeare

Art and Science, can they solve the issues together?

I was watching TV3's The Nation after attending the dawn service in Christchurch the other week. It mentioned a enviornmental project called Dialogues with Tomorrow. I was interested so I did some digging.

Now Future is a partnership between Sophie Jerram and Dugal McKinnon. It's about projects lead by art that investigate core issues in sustainability and ecology. It also aims to create a greater partnership between humanity and the enviornment. One of these projects is Dialogues with Tomorrow. It brings together artists and scientists to develop and exchange ideas to help solve enviornmental problems.

In two days it will be the 51st anniversary of C.P. Snow's Two Cultures lecture. This served as inspiration for Now Future. C.P. Snow was concerned that Science and Art were become further apart and their cultures weren't working together anymore. This would have detrimental effects for both of them. Fortunately today these cultures are working more together than they use to. Now Future is an example of this as well as the inventions and insights that have occured in recent years.

Art and science don't work seperately, though it sometimes might seem that way. Just look at Galileo and Einstein. Einstein's book, The World as I See It has some beautiful writing and artistic thought. Galileo had hundreds of inventions and ideas. They have displayed that art and science work together to imagine logical ideas. Though art and science see the world in different ways, they help eachother to see things they normally wouldn't see. If we wanted to be general, we could say science deals with logic and art deals with imagination.

As humans we have two hemispheres in our brain. Our left hemisphere and our right hemisphere. These affect our learning and thinking in different ways. Our left hemisphere is logic or science-orienated and our right one is imagination or art-orienated. Jill Taylor can give us understanding into the full world of both these hemispheres. In 1996 she suffered a massive left brain hemmorage. As a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist her recovery was difficult but gave her keen, imaginative and logical insight into these hemispheres.

She has said that we have two parts and that our imagination is a method for peace on this earth. "I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world and the more peaceful our planet will be." Seeing as how she had to use her left brain for her explanation, it shows that she doesn't believe in abandoning logic. Logically understanding how we can use our imagination for peace is essential achieving peace.

"We are the life force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world." - Jill Taylor