Globalisation In Early Childhood Education Essay
Globalisation affects the country’s culture and economy development. There is impact of globalisation for children and families in both developed and developing countries. There are positive and negative implications for globalisations.
In the developing countries, such as Africa, children were not supposed to view themselves as individuals – on your own and without the constant intimate presence of others – is the worst kind of punishment. (Penn, 2004) In this way, children may not be able to have his own decision and thoughts. People viewed themselves as a whole as community working as together. Children were trained to run errands from the moment they could toddle. (Penn, 2004) Children are to help out in the family and perform the given work the same as everyone. They are to work and contribute to the family. If they are encouraged to go to school, the family will have less helpers to support and they also face the challenge of funding their children’s education. It has also been experienced that although the majority of children in India today have access to school education, all of them are not receiving quality education for various reasons. (Govinda, 2011) One of the reasons could be the lack of funds to support the children’s education as their families are already in poverty. It becomes a challenge to sustain a child’s education throughout his life.
However according to Penn (2004), rich countries’ notion of helpfulness and obligation is rarely seen as an integral part of childhood and bearing. They view it as immoral to deploy children into the workforce. Globalisation of early childhood education has positive impact in the more developed countries as they have the beliefs of providing education to the children and against the practice of letting children be breadwinners for their households.
Another impact of globalisation of early childhood education has on the affluence and in poverty is in the area of language. In the case of Africa, the understanding of early childhood includes the virtue of togetherness called ‘ubuntu’ which is reflected in their very own native language. Hence, communications are reflected in different meanings in different languages. For example, terms of respect, deference and gender are built into most African languages, and communication is meaningless without them. (Penn, 2004) It is mentioned that there is a limited range of countries (USA and Europe) which derived the contemporary notions of child development. (Sanders, 2004) The increasingly globalised world culture can result in certain ideologies about children and childhood will come to displace the vital diversity of experience of being a child. These ideologies derived predominantly from Western, affluent countries. The fact that English language is the world language will affect the introduction of ideologies from western countries.
Children from developing countries who do not have the chance to learn and practise English as effectively as pre-school and schooling experiences sometimes could do more harm than good for them to pick up the language skills due to mismatched of teaching methods. (Penn, 2004) The children may not appreciate the literacy skills that they should learn. On the hand, children from affluent countries are usually English speakers who see no need to learn another language since English is the universal language. In a way, they may be at a disadvantage as those who are multilingual or bilingual are naturally at an intellectual advantage.
The implications of early childhood globalisations have been more receptive for developed countries than developing countries.
In developed countries such as America, the government plays an important role in the country. It has a role in promoting early childhood education and care. (Penn, 2004) Government supportive of early childhood education will influence the parents thoughts and views about education. Funds to help in early childhood education area will improved in the quality of education. For example, employing skilled teachers and sending teachers for professional development to be updated with the latest information and skills. Now they are beginning to focus on children’s experiences before school. (Penn, 2004) They are very positive towards globalisation of early childhood education and care.
All governments in most developed countires have a national framework for the development and support of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). (Penn, 2004) It shows the government emphasis on the importance and commitment of ECEC. European countries are especially embrace these policies to help balance work life in families. It is viewed as public good.
Unlike the case of developing countries, they have been facing potential negative implications for early childhood care and education.
According to Penn (2004), developing countries has increasing number of women are seeking out to work. The women and their families are moving into the cities. Therefore, they would send their children in to childcare and mothers will be able to go out to work. The need of having childcare services would increase and proper education will be able to be delivered to children.
However, there is a percentage of children who do not receive education or receive poor education in the cities. People pay for what they can afford, and poor people who cannot afford to pay fees either receive very poor service or none at all. (Penn, 2004) It is essential giving proper care and sending children to schools with proper education. The children most affected by poor quality schools and therefore facing problems of locational disadvantage; and the influence of gender and social background of children on their access to quality education. (Govinda and Madhumita, 2011)
Working mothers are working leaves their children in the care of their older children or leaving their children without any care. Leaving children without any proper care leads to accidents to happen. Parents may not have the knowledge of leaving their children alone without any care or leaving them to the older siblings care. Older siblings may not have the experience and knowledge looking after young children too. Accidents or death may happen when negligence takes place.
Another negative implication is that there is a mismatch of successful model for implementation of globalisation of early childhood education with the local traditions and context in developing countries. Based on Penn, she had done a research on the work of international donors’ agencies in the field of early childhood. She discovered that very often, these agencies would take into the child developement theory from the developed countries in order to implement initiatives in developing countries. The full implementation of such initiatives in developing countries can cause resistance and incorporation. It is inevitable to have modification for effectiveness. Historical and cultural influences may not seem to impact early childhood education but they are very important in understanding why things are the way they are. (Jackson and Fawcett, 2004)
In Mongolia, World Bank and other international agencies were willing to invest money in to help Mongolia to reform.(Penn, 2004) However, money were accepted but reforms could not take place. Donors tried to promote ‘community participation’ but it was not favoured by the local people as their best understanding is ‘home place’. Therefore it is meaningless for donors to help them. Reform ideas had to be stopped.
When initiatives or funds were given to the needed country, the people in the country may not work and tends to rely on the funds to support themselves and family. They do not see the importance to work to improve in their home economy. They ‘lack capacity’ of they deemed too lazy or dishonest to undertake the work that is necessary. (Penn, 2004) It becomes a cycle of helping the country and it may not be constantly other countries to help all the time.
Globalisation has open the door for reform in affluent countries and countries in poverty. There are positive and negative impacts and implications as it challenged the norms, the identities and belief systems of the countries. In globalisation, children in poverty-stricken countries are given the opportunity to attend schools. This will help the country’s economy as their human resource is more well-trained and prepared for the future. In globalisation, there are measures and policies in place to encourage women to join the workforce. Mothers are encouraged to enter the society to work. When both parents are out to work, it will help in earning more family income. However, the negative implications of globalisation for developing countries have to be well-managed. There should be room for improvement, modification and review. One of the ways is that the trend is for professionals from developing countries, such as South Africa, to fill gaps in the labour market in developed countries such as the United Kingdom. (Sadhana, 2009) In this case, workers from developing countries have the chance to earn more income and boost the economy and have sufficient funds to provide their children with a good early childhood education. There is still room for research in the area of globalisation of early childhood education so as to reap its full potential in both developed and developing countries.
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