Nursery World - Early Years Pioneers: Elinor Goldschmied

Elinor Goldschmied's contributions to the education of children and their carers are described by Sonia Jackson

Who is Elinor Goldschmied?

Elinor Goldschmied's life and work span much of the twentieth century. At the age of 95 she is still inspiring successive generations of parents and early years workers.

She was born in rural Gloucestershire, the fourth child of seven in a prosperous family. She remembers her early life in the countryside as full of wonderful opportunities for play - perhaps the basis of her intense feeling for nature.

Elinor's childhood was clouded by the early death of her mother and her favourite elder brother, aged eight. Her mother was never spoken of after her death and Elinor thinks some of her interest in communicating with children who don't yet speak is 'because we really didn't speak of deep things, painful things'. She was sent to live with her grandfather and attended Clifton High School, from where she went to train as a nursery teacher at the Froebel Institute in London.

One of her early jobs was in the junior school of Dartington Hall, Devon.

Dartington provided an exciting cultural and political environment which permanently changed her view of the world. In 1937 she won a scholarship to the mental health course at the London School of Economics and joined the Communist Party. She twice visited Russia before the Second World War.

During this time she met many leading figures in the scientific and psychoanalytic fields. She thinks the major influences on her thinking date from that time: Marx, Freud and Einstein.

During the war Elinor took responsibility for a large group of refugee and evacuated children whose behaviour was thought uncontrollable. The children were kept in dormitory accommodation and treated as a single group. Elinor divided them up into small groups with an individual staff member in charge of each one and the situation was transformed in weeks.

After the war, Elinor moved to Italy and played a major role in transforming the day nurseries and orphanages set up by Mussolini in Milan.

She introduced staff to the ideas of John Bowlby and Susan Isaacs, previously unknown, and developed many of the management theories that were later to be so influential. This international perspective marked her out as very different from most nursery education practitioners in Britain.

Elinor's last full-time professional job was as principal education social worker for the Inner London Education Authority. But one of the questions she most dislikes is 'Are you still working?' Arguably, her greatest contribution has been made since her 'retirement' in her work as a consultant to childcare services in England, Scotland, Italy and Spain.

What has she contributed to early years education and care?

Elinor is not an academic, and is not concerned with developing or expounding grand theories. She is concerned with showing how advances in our understanding of child development can translate into everyday practice. That is why much of her work has taken the form of films or videos with commentary rather than books or academic articles.

Her other major contribution is through her inspired teaching of generations of childcarers.

Until recently most early years writing was about nursery education, from three to five years, and focused only on the few hours that children spent in nursery schools. Day nurseries were not seen as educational establishments. Perhaps the three most important new ideas Elinor introduced into early years practice are:

Treasure baskets

I first met Elinor when I attended a session she was running on the treasure basket idea. This was not like any seminar I'd ever attended. In the dark, we were asked to pass around objects and say something about them. None of us could think of anything to say. When the light went on we found we were holding plastic toys. In the dark again, we passed round more objects. This time we could all express our sensations. These objects were from Elinor's treasure basket.

The treasure basket is designed for the few months of a child's life when they can sit up but are not mobile. There are only two rules:

* The objects, chosen to appeal to the baby's five senses, must be of natural materials, never plastic

* The adult should sit quietly and not interfere with the baby's exploration.

Heuristic play

This is a group activity for children in their second year, who sometimes find it difficult to settle to anything for more than a few minutes.

'Heuristic' means discovery, and this is the stage when children want to find out what they can do with objects they find.

Objects, all of natural materials, are laid in heaps around the room, with lots of tins and boxes to fill and empty out. Adults reorder the objects occasionally but do not intervene in the play.

Keyperson system

This is designed to ensure that each child in a day nursery has a special relationship with an individual staff member, through changing, feeding, bodily care and one-to-one conversation and play. A special feature is 'the island of intimacy', a period of about 20 minutes before the midday meal which each keyperson shares with a group of no more than five children.

What are the main messages from Elinor Goldschmied's work?

Perhaps this can be summed up in Elinor's favourite William Blake quotation, 'He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars'. Examining critically every facet of an early years setting, for children and staff, can make the daily routine more rewarding and pleasurable. We must try to see things from a child's point of view, be constantly attentive to detail and apply the same standards to what we provide for them as we would hope to receive ourselves.

She also held that large groups of young children do not make a calm and civilised atmosphere. It is better, as she showed in her wartime work, to split them into smaller groups with an adult who focuses attention on them.

Elinor often encourages early years workers to look for parallels between young children's experiences and things that happen to us. This helps us understand the feelings of children who do not yet speak. One example is the practice of encouraging parents to slip away when the child is absorbed in play. Elinor asks us to consider how we might feel if a friend who was seeing us off on a journey were to leave without saying goodbye when we were putting something on the luggage rack. NW

Sonia Jackson is professorial fellow of the Institute of Education, University of London