As I have not heard from anyone regarding my
requests for international contacts, I opted to explore the website http://developingchild.harvard.edu/index.php/activities/global_initiative/.
The Global Children’s Initiative was born out of a realization that we have an
obligation to see that all children worldwide are healthy: physically,
mentally, and developmentally.
The first thing that stuck me while reading the
website is that they base their work on what they learned while working in the
United States. I find this funny, as much of what I have read lately says that
the United States is trying to catch up to the rest of the world. The recent
battles over the Affordable Health Care Act are proof that the health system in
the U.S. is clearly not ideal, and the push for standardized testing is an
attempt to improve education to be more like other countries.
The next thing which struck me was the fact that
this Global Children’s Initiative is using the science of early childhood
development to create early childhood programs worldwide. We don’t even do that
in the United States! We IGNORE the science, and instead focus on the methods
with quickly reportable assessments.
Un Buen
Comienzo (A Good Start) is another program—this time in Chile—that resembles
the Head Start Program here in the United States. They focus on educating not
only the children, but the families as well. This is great—except that my
recent research into Head Start shows that they are so severely underfunded,
that they hit up the very people they serve and the people who work for them to
raise funds!
While I
know that the need for early childhood education and healthy development are an
important need worldwide, I find it ironic that an American University is
working on improving other countries, when our own country is so desperately in
need! I am certainly not saying that we should ignore the plights of other
countries. What I am saying is that maybe we should spend some of those
resources fixing what is wrong here before we start telling other countries how
they should be doing things.
Fortunately for Head Start 2014 there was in increase of 1 billion dollars this year... What source did you see that they hit up the people who work for them? Each program has a delegate agency that receives funding. I did do fundraising only with the YMCA but all other programs I worked for I did not. I was never asked in those programs to donate. We were asked but not required to donate. But the revenue that was generated went directly back into the programs I managed to provide scholarships. I oversaw HS, preschool and school-age programs.
ReplyDeleteI will never understand the research and dollar amounts that we put in other countries either as our own are suffering.
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ReplyDeleteI feel that America spends more time helping others and than focusing on our own problems. How can we fix some place else when we need help ourselves. I feel with the wave of educators coming out that we have the power to change things and hopefully we can make a difference for the next generation.
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