We need to rethink early education for a post-COVID world
by Leslee Udwin
H.G. WELLS once said: “Civilization is a race between education and catastrophe. Undoubtedly education is always the primary engine of progress. But what kind of education and mediated when, are I believe the key drivers in this race. When I say ‘education’, I do not mean mere access to education, nor do I mean the broken system of education that was created in and for the Industrial Revolution to fill factories, and which is not fit for purpose. I mean holistic education of the young human being to fulfil their potential for positive life outcomes. How we achieve this is not rocket-science; it’s neuroscience.
If we are to successfully recalibrate our values as a world, we must begin with the children, and the younger the better. It has been widely accepted that children need to study numeracy, literacy, and core academic content, but the movement to add social and emotional learning (SEL) as a missing 3rd dimension to education is only just beginning to gain recognition and momentum. Educating children in skills such as empathy, celebration of diversity, gender equality, kindness and mindfulness is crucial to developing the whole child to enact this shift to veer us away from the trajectory to catastrophe. If children across the globe are educated in competencies, values and skills that help them grow into compassionate, empathetic and inclusive adults, who care for and about one another, our future and the future of our planet will be assured.
Think Equal is both a movement and a very tangible and concrete programme of narrative picture books, prescriptive lesson plans and accompanying resources which have been designed by experts in psychology, gender equity, neuroscience, human rights and education. It is designed to educate hearts in the very Early Years, between 3 and 6, when the brain is optimally neuroplastic and ‘sensitive’ and neuropathways of habitual ways of responding with understanding, empathy and kindness can be co-created in the physical architecture of the developing brain. It is imperative that we give the same attention and priority to these learning areas as we do to ‘academic skills’. In fact this missing subject of social and emotional learning should be compulsory on national curricula worldwide, particularly in the early years.
The Think Equal Programme is playing out and proving to be empowering and powerfully transformative of children in the most diverse of socio-economic circumstances, in 15 countries, across 6 continents, from rural Kwa Zulu Natal, to London, indigenous communities in Mexico and India to Los Angeles. Children as diverse as it is possible to imagine them to be, are being provided with the toolbox which helps them experientially to develop empathetic foundations, emotional regulation and inclusive, equal-minded love for humanity that these children will carry with them into the world for the rest of their lives, as they grow and make meaningful and positive impact on their communities.
I see children as agents of social change. It is effectively only through them and the next generation that we can develop the capacities that humanity needs for sustainable development. We must urgently re-imagine, re-purpose and rebuild our education system to serve our society and humanity holistically, in all its component parts. The ‘old world’ view of ‘education’ – the industrial revolution’s outmoded view of it being the path to a healthy economy and the labour market, is long overdue for rethinking. It must be urgently supplanted by an education which leads us to inclusion, equality, lasting peace and well-being. We must prepare our youngest children with the foundations for compassionate, empathetic, dignified and respectful lives. We now have new methodologies, new tools. We must implement them urgently to change education policy and mindset.
From whichever angle each of us come at these lessons learned, at the end of the Covid crisis we find ourselves in, the last thing we should do is going back to the way things were. We must start a new beginning, going forward with the insights and the wisdom we have gleaned – with our values rethought, and our priorities recalibrated. Anne Frank from her own enforced lockdown said: “Look at how a single candle can define and defy the dark.” I believe this to be the powerful potential narrative of this pandemic – if we join hands and hearts in making it so, but above all if we take active steps in implementing and scaling programmes like Think Equal.
Leslee Udwin is the founder and CEO of Think Equal – a non-profit registered in both UK and USA which aims to promote system change in education to bring Social and Emotional Learning front and centre as the core purpose of Early Childhood Education across the globe. Think Equal was awarded a WISE Award in 2020 as well as being selected as one of HundrED’s global innovations in education. Leslee was awarded the Anna Lindh Human Rights Prize, the UN Women for Peace Activist Award, and the Gandhi Foundation Peace Award. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Think Equal is giving caregivers, teachers, parents and children a series of free narrative picture books and activities, including a new narrative picture book for children, written with the help of the World Health Organization, called “Rainbows in Windows” about the pandemic.