Once again, the great debate about early childhood education is raging in our midst. For children aged two to six, what is best: a parent at home; a nanny; or a facility that combines day care with an educational program?
Once a universal, publicly financed system of early childhood education is established, the odds are that it will become a permanent feature of our societal landscape like medicare. The reason I’m so convinced of this is that I experienced such a system first hand when two of my children attended Maternelles classes in France in the late 1980s. The Maternelle program is available, free of charge, to children aged two to six.
France set up the system many decades ago, long before it was trendy to think that early childhood education was one of the keys to educational success at later levels. France’s original motive was to encourage a higher birth rate so that French military potential would not slip too much below that of Germany. But the Maternelle system has long since evolved into a mainstay of French society. It is not a topic for debate, which divides the right from the left as it does in Canada. There is nothing elitist about the system, which operates in remote villages, in the countryside, and in the heart of Paris.
You can enrol your kids in Maternelle classes when they’re two, provided they’re toilet trained, which most French kids are by that age. That was a sticking point for us when we enrolled our two little ones in the program in the rural area in the south of France where we were living. Emily, who was thr
ee and a half, made it in. But Jonathan, who had just turned two was not yet fully toilet trained. We enrolled him in a garderie, a day care centre, where you then paid about a dollar an hour for him to attend. That wonderful facility was also run out of public funds and was staffed by trained professionals. Jonathan made it into the maternelle program when we returned to France three years later.At the school Emily attended, with no tuition for us as foreigners, the program involved language arts and developmentally appropriate exercises, crafts, games, dance, singing, rest and play. Teachers in the program normally have the equivalent of a masters degree in early childhood education.
In France, a country at least as family and child oriented as ours, about thirty per cent of children aged two to three attend the Maternelles, eighty per cent of those three to four attend, and ninety per cent of those four to five are enrolled. French national census data shows that Maternelle attendance improves a child's chance of passing first grade, an important indicator of later school success for pupils from all social strata.
Classes ran from 9.00 to 5.00 p.m. with a two hour lunch break from noon to 2.00 p.m. If you wanted your child to stay for lunch, you bought a ticket for about the equivalent of $1.50. For this Emily received a four course meal. The menu for each day of the week was posted on the door of the school on Monday morning. Some of my Canadian visitors in search of gourmet experiences wanted to know if they could eat there too.
Emily hated the school for the first three months, not because she didn’t like her teacher or her classmates but because everything was in French. She acted as though we had robbed her of her ability to communicate and she was mad…. But at the end of three months, everything changed. She spoke pretty good French by then and she loved the school. Now, at age sixteen, she speaks excellent French and can put on any French accent you want, from Quebecois, to Parisian to that of Provence.
What she learned in the Maternelle classes has been a permanent acquisition and that was true for Jonathan later on. It wasn’t just the scholarly side of the program that mattered. What both kids got was an excellent socialization experience. They made close friends in the school, some of whom remain in touch to this day.
I don’t think any of this would have worked if Emily and Jonathan had not been very close to my spouse and me. The idea of putting your kids in an early educational setting as an alternative to parenting is a very bad one. You can’t run away from your responsibilities as a parent. Today in Canada, the two income family has become the norm for a vast number of people, largely for reasons of economic necessity. Mothers and fathers who work can definitely be good parents, but they need to find a first class solution to meet the needs of their children during the working day. Early childhood education has been proven over a very long time to be an excellent part of a child’s experience, whether or not their parents are in the work force.
Maybe sometime in the next millennium we’re going to wake up to what the French and other Europeans have understood for decades. Indeed, there would be no better way to begin the new millennium than by launching a federal-provincial program that provides a universal, tuition free program for children starting at age two. And of course, the system would be voluntary.
Once a universal, publicly financed system of early childhood education is established, the odds are that it will become a permanent feature of our societal landscape like medicare. The reason I’m so convinced of this is that I experienced such a system first hand when two of my children attended Maternelles classes in France in the late 1980s. The Maternelle program is available, free of charge, to children aged two to six.
France set up the system many decades ago, long before it was trendy to think that early childhood education was one of the keys to educational success at later levels. France’s original motive was to encourage a higher birth rate so that French military potential would not slip too much below that of Germany. But the Maternelle system has long since evolved into a mainstay of French society. It is not a topic for debate, which divides the right from the left as it does in Canada. There is nothing elitist about the system, which operates in remote villages, in the countryside, and in the heart of Paris.
You can enrol your kids in Maternelle classes when they’re two, provided they’re toilet trained, which most French kids are by that age. That was a sticking point for us when we enrolled our two little ones in the program in the rural area in the south of France where we were living. Emily, who was thr
ee and a half, made it in. But Jonathan, who had just turned two was not yet fully toilet trained. We enrolled him in a garderie, a day care centre, where you then paid about a dollar an hour for him to attend. That wonderful facility was also run out of public funds and was staffed by trained professionals. Jonathan made it into the maternelle program when we returned to France three years later.At the school Emily attended, with no tuition for us as foreigners, the program involved language arts and developmentally appropriate exercises, crafts, games, dance, singing, rest and play. Teachers in the program normally have the equivalent of a masters degree in early childhood education.In France, a country at least as family and child oriented as ours, about thirty per cent of children aged two to three attend the Maternelles, eighty per cent of those three to four attend, and ninety per cent of those four to five are enrolled. French national census data shows that Maternelle attendance improves a child's chance of passing first grade, an important indicator of later school success for pupils from all social strata.
Classes ran from 9.00 to 5.00 p.m. with a two hour lunch break from noon to 2.00 p.m. If you wanted your child to stay for lunch, you bought a ticket for about the equivalent of $1.50. For this Emily received a four course meal. The menu for each day of the week was posted on the door of the school on Monday morning. Some of my Canadian visitors in search of gourmet experiences wanted to know if they could eat there too.
Emily hated the school for the first three months, not because she didn’t like her teacher or her classmates but because everything was in French. She acted as though we had robbed her of her ability to communicate and she was mad…. But at the end of three months, everything changed. She spoke pretty good French by then and she loved the school. Now, at age sixteen, she speaks excellent French and can put on any French accent you want, from Quebecois, to Parisian to that of Provence.
What she learned in the Maternelle classes has been a permanent acquisition and that was true for Jonathan later on. It wasn’t just the scholarly side of the program that mattered. What both kids got was an excellent socialization experience. They made close friends in the school, some of whom remain in touch to this day.
I don’t think any of this would have worked if Emily and Jonathan had not been very close to my spouse and me. The idea of putting your kids in an early educational setting as an alternative to parenting is a very bad one. You can’t run away from your responsibilities as a parent. Today in Canada, the two income family has become the norm for a vast number of people, largely for reasons of economic necessity. Mothers and fathers who work can definitely be good parents, but they need to find a first class solution to meet the needs of their children during the working day. Early childhood education has been proven over a very long time to be an excellent part of a child’s experience, whether or not their parents are in the work force.
Maybe sometime in the next millennium we’re going to wake up to what the French and other Europeans have understood for decades. Indeed, there would be no better way to begin the new millennium than by launching a federal-provincial program that provides a universal, tuition free program for children starting at age two. And of course, the system would be voluntary.
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