We Must Focus On Outside The Classroom Too If We Want To Improve Early Childhood Education

If we want quality Early Childhood Education and Development, we can’t just focus on the classroom. A clean environment, well maintained playgrounds, highly funded libraries, safe neighborhoods, museums, and community events like block parties are all key to early childhood education and healthy physical/social/emotional development. It does not matter if it’s the city, suburbs, or rural community, we are failing as a society if we don’t feel comfortable letting our kids ride their bikes or walk in a mix aged group to a local park to play unsupervised. Moreover, parents and other caretakers need to have a network of other adults in their lives who they can talk about raising children with and get advice. I am not saying what happens in the classroom is not important, it is. But we must also have an Ecological framework where we think about all the systems that effect the child when they are not in the classroom.