There is a worrying trend among parents and some education professionals, with the movement towards merging nurseries with primary schools, to seeing nursery as preparation for school. It is not. As early years professionals we should not be colluding with that myth. Nursery is about preparing a child for the rest of their life.
Children are being brought up in a highly competitive world of global markets and parents view their child's future as depending on formal education. But education is not something that begins with formal schooling. It begins the moment a child is born and is something children do for themselves long before formal education begins.
The child educates himself long before he walks to the school gate holding his mother's hand. The child learns through his hands, his muscles and his movement. He learns more about the world through building on some knowledge he has already acquired. He learns that sand on a spade in the sandpit can be transferred into a bucket, but he cannot do the same with a sieve because it has holes in it.
As early years practitioners, we are aware of the self-education that goes on before school and appreciate the solemn undertaking of the work we do in ensuring a child has many experiences to build on in preparation for the rest of his life. Our job is to work in partnership with parents; to facilitate that learning through the correct environment; and to provide the appropriate experiences and opportunities for the child at the right time. By the time children have left our nurseries to go to school, the building blocks of learning and self-education are concreted in its foundations.
Our aim should be to agree that the most important period of a child's life is not the age of primary, secondary or university study but the period from birth to age six - a time when intelligence itself is being formed.
Then, together, we endeavour to develop free human beings who are able to impart purpose and direction to the rest of their lives.
