Week 8!

My most passionate hope for my future as an early childhood professional is to become a more effective advocate for children and families in my community.

It has been wonderful working with all of you in this class!

I have learned so much from you through your discussion posts and blogs. We all bring our own perspective to the early childhood field and it has helped me very much to tap into that while learning about anti-bias education. Best wishes to you all as you complete the last course in the program. I really can not believe we will be all done with our Master's degree program in 8 short weeks! Wow!

                                                                               

Impacts on Early Emotional Development

I chose to focus my blog assigment on the country of Nepal because my friend volunteered in an orphanage there last year - something I would love to do if I was ever able to free my life up enough to do it!

From what I gathered in reading the UNICEF website on Nepal, gender discrimination is alive and well in that country...and it is apparent in all aspects of life.

In fact, there is a wide gap between women and men when it comes to adequate access to health care, nutrition, education - or even basic participation in decision-making for themselves or their children. Sadly, infant mortality is much higher for girls, and illiteracy is far more common among women than men. Many rural women live in severe poverty, without any means of improving conditions for themselves and their families. Within households women often have less to eat than men. Insufficient calorie intake for the women leads directly to chronic malnutrition in the infants they nurse.

Lack of economic opportunity has resulted in many of the most productive members of households to migrate and leave the villages. As a result more and more women have been heading households alone and taking on the burden of sustaining the rural economy. In fact, women constitute more than 60 per cent of the agricultural labor force but have little access to land, production technology and training.

Nepal’s Millennium Development Goals progress report (2005) estimates that the country is likely to reach by 2015 the targets for reducing poverty, child mortality, tuberculosis, and increasing access to improved drinking water, but is unlikely to do so for universal primary education or halting HIV and AIDS. The goals for hunger, gender equality, and maternal health would require additional and very substantial efforts.  (UNICEF, 2011)

Given the extraordinary effort involved in simply surviving in Nepal, it is no wonder there is so little push for girls to acquire education.

If I were a young girl in Nepal, I might feel that I wasn't as important as the boys are. I would feel that it was unfair, but that I had no power to change it. Even if I did have the chance to get an education, I might feel that it had little value and that my efforts wouldn't be supported by my family or community.

As an early childhood professional, I find the circumstances endured by Nepalize females to be disturbing and depressing. I wish I could help. Reading about their struggles strengthens my resolve to ensure that I am providing the best possible early childhood experience for children of both genders at my preschool.

Resource

UNICEF (2011). Retrieved from: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/index.html

Boys in uniform waiting for the school bus

The Sexualization of Early Childhood

           

This is a really alarming and depressing subject. The media constantly bombards children with the message that girls have to be sexy to gain acceptance. According to Levin and Kilbourne, children are bombarded from a very early age with graphic messages about sexiness from the media (2009).  In my opinion, this is because the media is still controlled primarily by men. As more women attain positions of power in the media world, I really hope this skewed and extremely damaging value system will change.

On the other hand, some parents really buy into the sexualization of their young daughters. The television show Toddlers and Tiaras delves into the world of child ‘beauty’ pageants. These young children are dressed provocatively, and made up to look like tiny little tramps. I just can not imagine those impressionable little girls emerging from this lifestyle with healthy self esteem and high moral standards.

As Early Childhood professionals, we always focus on giving children a healthy start to life. We want them to be proud of who they are and accepting of others - regardless of what they look like. This is in direct contrast to many of the messages they get from the media. Hopefully, we can give the children in our care such positive self identity that they’ll be much less vulnerable to those messages.

Levin, D. E.& Kilbourne, J. (2009). [Introduction]. So sexy so soon: The new sexualized childhood and what parents can do to protect their kids (pp. 1–8). New York: Ballantine Books. Retrieved from: http://dianeelevin.com/sosexysosoon/introduction.pdf

Evaluating Impacts on Professional Practice

                                                                                                                                                                                                              

One ‘–ism’ that I see a little of at my preschool is classism. This is because my area has a lot of displaced fishermen who are trying to raise families in the face of more and more over regulation of their trade. On the other hand, we also have a lot of wealthy families who are here because of the beautiful coastline. Sometimes these factions don’t blend well and there is a bit of classism.

 For this assignment, I will use the example of a mother who works full time as a preschool teacher and struggles to keep up with the rest of life, too. She doesn’t make enough money to cover anything but the basics, and is constantly performing a balancing act to stay afloat. She worries about raising her children in a rougher part of town. She has to shop for her children at the thrift shop, and she worries they will be embarrassed and ashamed if or when they realize they are in the free lunch / free sports program at school.

As a preschool teacher, her students would probably feel some negative effects of her poverty, depression, and constant stress. Struggling to get basic needs met for herself and her family would make it very difficult to devote the time and attention necessary to meet her student’s needs. In addition, it would be hard to support parents who seemed to have a much better life than her. For instance, she would feel some real anger and resentment towards mothers who didn’t have to work - but still couldn’t manage to pick up their children on time. This would interfere with her ability to develop a good working relationship with the families. Also, the resentment might carry over into her relationship with the children. She might feel they are spoiled or being raised to feel entitled – or even that they look down on her because she's not as wealthy as their parents are. In some cases, higher-income families may reflect social attitudes about income and professionalism and may not treat staff with respect or recognize their educational background or their high level of skills (Derman – Sparks & Edwards, 2010, p. 110).

I think it would be next to impossible for this preschool teacher to overcome these negative feelings and stay focused on providing the best educational experience possible for the children in her care.

Derman-Sparks, L., & Olsen Edwards, J. (2010). “Anti-bias education for young children and
ourselves.” Washington, D.C.: National Association for the Education of Young Children
(NAEYC).