Children who receive quality education can improve their life chances. They are more likely to be employed, have higher earning potential and live a healthier lifestyle.
Early learning helps children develop socially and emotionally. They learn to respect others and work together. They also develop self-control, which enables them to cooperate with peers and resolve conflicts.
Learning to Think for Yourself
The experiential learning theory, influenced by John Dewey, Kurt Lewin and Jean Piaget, emphasizes that children need to experience things for themselves in order to learn them. Grasping experiences helps develop thinking skills, which can be used to adapt prior knowledge to new situations. It also helps kids build self-confidence and a positive view of themselves as capable learners.
Education is a child’s right — and yet it’s hard to access for many kids. Conflict, natural disasters and displacement often block educational opportunities. UNICEF’s education programs focus on overcoming barriers to children’s learning.
A whole child approach focuses on the relationship between a kid’s social, emotional and cognitive development and their physical and mental health. A smaller student-teacher ratio helps kids receive the attention they need to thrive. Activities like reading, storytelling and playing music help them develop language and communication skills, while art projects foster creativity and imagination. Math activities like sorting, comparing and classifying help them think scientifically.
Learning to Respect Different Cultures
Many people in the world come from different cultures. It’s important that children learn to respect these differences and understand that everyone is unique.
During their early years, children start to make sense of the world around them through categorizing. This includes sorting things like skin color, language, religion and food into groups.
This can lead to stereotyping and prejudice if not corrected. It’s important for adults to model positive ways to talk about cultural differences with children and be open to hearing their questions and curiosity.
Staff can support diversity by fostering a welcoming environment, offering families resources about their family traditions and culture, and sharing materials that highlight a variety of cultures. They can also expose kids to different languages, foods and customs through activities and field trips.
Learning to Communicate
As children develop physically, socially and emotionally, they also grow in their ability to communicate. Teachers help them use their growing communication skills to learn new concepts like math, reading and writing.
Language and learning capacities appear to be relatively resilient processes; for example, hearing children of deaf parents develop a spoken language without direct instruction. On the other hand, the emergence of reading is less robust; some children experience problems.
It is crucial that every child can access quality education, regardless of their gender, race, age, location or income. Unfortunately, many obstacles stand in the way of this right, including conflict, natural disasters, health crises, poverty and isolation. The UNICEF Let Us Learn program aims to address these obstacles and empower children to achieve their full potential. They do this by promoting quality education and providing access to safe, nurturing, enriching environments. This is particularly important for early brain development, which can be influenced by the quality of the environment.