Early Childhood Education Is Foundational Human Work

We spend a lot of time talking about whether young children are ready for school. Can they recognize their letters? Can they count? Can they listen to a story, follow a routine, put on their coat, manage a transition, sit when they need to sit?

Those are reasonable questions. But after more than twenty years working in schools, including time as a kindergarten teacher, I think they can also make us overlook some of the most important learning happening in early childhood spaces.

Young children are learning how to live with other people.

That sounds simple until you spend a morning in a kindergarten room. Someone has the truck somebody else wanted. Three children have very different ideas about the game they're creating. Someone wants a hug and someone else absolutely does not. A child wants to join a group that isn't sure it wants another person. Someone thinks something is unfair. Someone has been hurt. Someone needs space but doesn't yet know how to ask for it.

This is where Early Childhood Educators do an extraordinary amount of foundational human work.

The work can be easy to underestimate because so much of it happens through small interactions. An ECE helping a child say, “Stop, I don't like that,” isn't simply resolving the issue in front of them. They're helping that child develop language for a boundary. When they help another child hear that boundary and respond to it, they're working with both children on what it means to share space with another human being.

When they help children work out who gets to play, what fair might look like, how to disagree, or what to do after someone has been hurt, they are building capacities we will continue asking those children to use for the rest of their lives.

Long before we expect people to collaborate with colleagues, advocate for themselves, participate in communities, navigate disagreement, respect consent, repair relationships, or listen to perspectives that differ from their own, they begin practising those things in much smaller ways.

Often while wearing a snowsuit.

My own thinking about the Web of Rights began in a kindergarten classroom. I was interested in whether very young children could meaningfully understand the idea of rights. What I discovered was that the language needed to be developmentally appropriate, but the thinking itself didn't have to be simplistic.

Children already had a strong understanding of identity. They knew they could have a favourite colour that was different from mine. They knew they could love a game their friend didn't enjoy. They understood that another person couldn't simply decide those things for them.

Once we started there, the conversations became much more interesting.

If I have a right to play, what happens when the way I want to play makes somebody else feel unsafe? If I don't like being touched, how do I tell someone? If two people want different things, does somebody always have to lose?

These are early childhood questions, but they're also community questions.

One of the examples I've used for years involves three children trying to play together. One loves wrestling. Another wants to wrestle too but is smaller and sometimes feels uncomfortable with how rough the play becomes. The third wants to be involved but doesn't like being touched.

An adult can solve that problem quickly by saying, “No wrestling.”

Sometimes, for immediate safety, that may even be necessary. But once everyone is safe, there is a much richer educational opportunity available.

The children can talk about what each person needs. Perhaps two children wrestle while the third becomes the referee. Perhaps they establish a stop word. Perhaps they decide what kinds of contact are okay. Perhaps tomorrow somebody changes their mind and the agreement needs to change too.

Now the children aren't simply being managed through a conflict. They're learning how to negotiate one. They're practising boundaries, listening, adapting, perspective-taking, safety, participation, and shared responsibility. That kind of structured negotiation sits at the heart of the Web of Rights.

This is also why the language we give young children is so important.

We often tell children to “be nice” or “make a good choice,” but those phrases ask a great deal from a child without always giving them much to work with. A child needs language they can actually use: “I need some space.” “I'm still using that.” “Can I play when you're finished?” “Stop. I don't like that.” “I want to tell you what happened.” “Can we find another way?”

Those sentences are simple because they need to be. They give children another option besides yelling, pushing, withdrawing, grabbing, or waiting for an adult to solve the problem for them.

Over time, something deeper begins to develop. A child who can name a boundary is practising self-advocacy. A child who learns to respond to somebody else's boundary is beginning to understand responsibility to another person. A child who experiences repair after conflict begins to learn that getting something wrong doesn't have to end a relationship. A child who discovers that fairness sometimes requires different responses for different people is developing a more complex understanding of community.

These are not abilities that suddenly arrive in adulthood. We build them.

That is why I sometimes struggle with the way we talk about “school readiness.” When early childhood education is framed primarily as preparation for the academic years ahead, we risk shrinking the work.

ECEs aren't simply getting children ready for Grade 1.

They're helping children learn how to participate in a community.

They're helping children experience fairness before they have sophisticated language for equity. They're helping children understand consent through everyday boundaries. They're helping children discover that their voice is important while learning that the other people in the room have voices too. They're showing children that having a right doesn't mean getting everything you want, because your rights exist alongside everyone else's.

Much of this happens through play, conversation, observation, relationships, and hundreds of ordinary interactions that will never appear on a standardized assessment.

But consider what we eventually ask of the adults those children will become.

We want people who can disagree without dehumanizing each other. We want people who can listen, communicate boundaries, advocate for themselves, consider another person's perspective, participate without dominating, repair harm, and understand that living in community comes with responsibilities to the people around them.

For many children, early learning settings are among their first sustained experiences of a community beyond their family. Different personalities, identities, needs, preferences, bodies, boundaries, and ways of communicating all have to coexist in the same room.

That's not a warm-up for human life.

That is human life, at a smaller scale.

When I think about the work of ECEs through that lens, I don't see people preparing children for the “real” learning that comes later. I see educators working at the foundation, helping children develop the language and capacities that every classroom, workplace, family, neighbourhood, and democratic community will eventually ask them to use.

If we want future communities filled with people who know how to use their voices while respecting the rights of others, who can disagree and repair, who can protect boundaries and still find ways to belong together, we need to take seriously the places where that learning begins.

Early childhood education is foundational human work.