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Unlocking potential: Why early childhood education is essential for lifelong learning and growth

Terry Bell
By Terry Bell
18 Mar 2025
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There’s a renewed urgency in South Africa to focus on early learning for children in the foundation phase. How important this period is in terms of the adult future has been confirmed by a multitude of studies, especially over the past century.

With the dust having barely settled on the accolades and opprobrium heaped on the latest matric results, it seems appropriate to recall what the American educationalist John Dewey had to say about such levels of schooling. He noted: “I have never been able to feel much optimism regarding the possibilities of higher education when it is built upon warped and weak foundations.”

It was a point also made recently by Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube when she pointed out that better “foundation phase” learning would result in better matric results. These statements merely highlight the example that if you build a house of whatever design or size, and misuse the materials available while ignoring the need for sound foundations, the structure is likely to be unstable and even dangerous.

In many cases, if remedial action becomes necessary, it is usually time-consuming and expensive — and seldom, if ever, quite as good as it might have been.

This applies to all of us. We all start out as babies, infants and children. And a critical part of the foundation, for every adult, starts at conception. With few exceptions, when — and wherever — there is a birth, a baby, without instruction, will soon be gurgling and babbling. A young life that does not have to be taught to use tongue and lips and vocal chords, to clench and unclench fingers, a baby is a bundle of learning, reaching out into the world.

Properly nourished, cared for and spoken to, a baby, within two or three years, is a walking, talking, exploring and inquiring child, eager to develop innate abilities: the living foundation for the adult life to come.

It is a simple fact recognised across the world — and the centuries — by many educational theorists, practitioners and philosophers. From various points of view they have pointed out that the earliest years of the child are those that are most receptive to learning — that, almost sponge-like, young children absorb the often incredibly complex lessons of language and social behaviour.

And how important this period is in terms of the adult future has been confirmed by a multitude of studies, especially over the past century.

Astounding progress


But for most parents and other adults, this quite astounding progress of an individual is so commonplace that it is simply accepted without necessarily too much thought, let alone wonder. At the same time, most adults today regard young people, by and large, as occupying the special category of childhood, a period thought largely incapable of independent thought or reason.

However, this is a fairly recent concept that has not been the case for millennia, let alone centuries. Even 2,000 years ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle and his student, Plato, were among the ancient world’s most prominent advocates of early education.

They both acknowledged that the early years of a child’s life are the most important from the point of view of learning: that this is where basic education begins.

The 17th-century Czech educationalist John Amos Comenius, author of School of Infancy, noted in 1633: “General corruption of the world begins in the roots. Therefore, also the universal renewal of the world must begin from there… All hoped-for universal reform depends on the first education.” 

Even earlier, the English educator, head teacher and priest Richard Mulcaster published advice in 1581 that is still not applied in most countries today. His proposal: “The most highly skilled and highly paid teachers should teach the lower classes, which should be smaller than those at the top of the school.”

In this 21st century, most parents and children are confronted with a torrent of news, views and commercially driven information through a variety of media. We are all now, old and young, facing a constant barrage of images, information, advice and agitation via friends, acquaintances, the internet, television, radio, print and other media. 

At the same time, the nuclear family — all too frequently with one parent — has become the norm. So, most of us live in environments where there exists a plethora of influences over which a parent, tutor or teacher can have little or almost no control.

This fact is widely ignored because a belief exists, promoted by advertising, that such control can be achieved. For example, a parental control function advertised on South African television told parents: “You cannot control everything your kids do, but you can control what they watch.”

Barriers


All this does is reinforce barriers of communication between adults and children. As such, it may hamper or distort the inquisitiveness and open, honest discussion so necessary for the holistic education that can enable children to distinguish fact from fake and confront their environments rationally.

Here, non-dogmatic, child-centred early education, including the provision of adequate nutrition, would play a vital role. Such preschool provision, very much involving parents, should provide a stimulating environment in which children can grow and parents too can profit. But in our grossly unequal society, this is something that excludes the majority of families.

Even in two-parent families, both parents often have to work or are too busy trying to make ends meet: they cannot provide a sound learning environment nor, all too often, an adequate diet. Yet research has clearly shown that such provision is both socially and economically beneficial to society. Governments are also legally obliged, by international treaty, to provide early childhood care and education that would give children the best possible chance to maximise whatever potential they possess.

Yet most administrations pay scant, if any, attention to this responsibility. And that is to the ultimate detriment of the future. DM

Children: Our Future, written by Barbara and Terry Bell, is available from the DM Shop at R220.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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