Observing the same individuals who created our collective screen addiction now restricting their own kids’ weekly screen time to ninety minutes is incredibly bizarre. Speaking at the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival, Peter Thiel revealed that his two young children are only permitted to use screens for an hour and a half every seven days. Apparently, the audience gasped. It’s difficult to tell if that response was a result of recognition or surprise. In order to get their toddlers through the afternoon, the majority of parents worldwide are doing the exact opposite. The World Organization for Early Childhood Education (OMEP) and…
Author: Kelsey Myers
Kelsey Myers
Kelsey Myers is a Senior Editor at worldomep.org and a dedicated advocate for early childhood education whose work begins — and ends — with a simple belief: that the earliest years of a child's life matter more than almost anything else we can invest in. Based at a local school, Kelsey works daily alongside the children and families whose experiences inform everything she writes. She doesn't observe early education from a distance. She is inside it — in the classrooms, on the playgrounds, in the conversations between teachers and parents that shape how young children understand the world around them. That proximity gives her writing a warmth and specificity that purely policy-driven commentary rarely achieves. Through her writing at worldomep.org, Kelsey brings that same energy to readers — making the case, clearly and consistently, that early childhood education deserves far more attention than it typically receives. Kelsey shares her personal opinions on: https://x.com/Butterflyboule
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The majority of school systems worldwide approach early childhood education with a certain amount of stubbornness. Small chairs bolted into inflexible rows, worksheets piled on tables, and clocks on every wall serving as a constant reminder that time is being spent, tracked, and optimized are all examples of this. All of this is predicated on the idea that play is something kids do after their real work is done and that structured instruction is serious. It is becoming more difficult to defend that assumption. Research from organizations like OMEP, which has long promoted child-centered early education worldwide, and institutions like…
Few people outside of Stockholm University were closely following Cecilia Lundholm’s research on climate education when it first began to circulate outside of academic circles. That was the part that frustrated me. There was science. For years, information about how climate disasters were affecting children’s education, mental health, and sense of future had been gathering. However, the discussion at the highest levels of international policy continued to return to carbon credits and emissions targets, as if children were merely a side topic. Perhaps for a while the timing was just off. Before the world could comprehend what climate science was…
In July, Bangkok is unrelentingly humid. The kind of heat that, despite the dryness of the agenda items, makes conference rooms feel urgent. However, during the third week of that month in 2024, a declaration urging the UN to devote a full decade to early childhood care and education was signed inside the halls of the 76th OMEP World Assembly. This statement deserves more attention than it has received. The majority of readers may not be familiar with it. The declaration aims to address a portion of the issue, including that gap. Since its founding in 1948, the World Organization…
Almost every government on the planet has signed a document that is now thirty-five years old. It states that children are entitled to food, education, and safety from exploitation and violence. It states that no child should be subjected to torture. It asserts that children should be protected in conflict areas. It states unequivocally that all decisions made by adults on behalf of children must be made with their best interests in mind. And yet, in a nation that signed every document, a child is currently being recruited into an armed group, going to bed hungry, or sitting in a…
The first 1,000 days are a single, nearly mythical figure that has dominated discussions about child development for years. from conception to two years of age. We were told that was the window. If you miss it, you will have lost something that is impossible to get back. In pediatric guidelines, funding proposals, and global health circles, it became a rallying cry. However, a new wave of research, spearheaded by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in partnership with OMEP, the World Organization for Early Childhood Education, is subtly and rather urgently challenging the notion that everything important…
Imagine a conference room in Bangkok during the summer of 2024, complete with ceiling fans, long tables, and almost 400 academics, researchers, and policymakers who have come from all over the world with the somewhat stubborn belief that most governments spend the least amount of money on the most important years of a person’s life. There was something about the discussions at the 76th World Assembly of the World Organization for Early Childhood Education (OMEP) that felt less like scholarly discourse and more like a group of people’s frustrations finding a formal outlet. OMEP is not a brand-new company. It…
Between a child’s first word and their first day of school, there is a time when something fundamental is either developed or overlooked. This has been known for decades by researchers. Most of the time, after nodding along at conferences, policymakers have returned home and taken very little action. However, there has been a gradual, nearly imperceptible change in the halls of education ministries on five continents. Additionally, it has its roots in an organization that the majority of parents are unaware of and that works in an area that most governments have historically undervalued and underfunded. Convincing world leaders…
The Harrison County Courthouse is located in Bethany, Missouri, a small county seat where the hardware store, diner, and local legal life all revolve around the courthouse square. For most people walking by, the building is unremarkable. However, that courthouse is now at the center of something far more serious than Morgan Michelle Smith, a 31-year-old from Ridgeway, may have thought when her kindergarten-age child began missing school days. A Class C Misdemeanor charge of Violation of Education Requirement of a Child has been brought against Smith. Her child had 47 unexcused absences throughout the academic year, according to the…
What’s going on in Seattle at the moment has an almost poetic quality. A growing number of parents now live in the city that created the cloud, trained the algorithms, and introduced AI into almost every aspect of the economy, but they do not want any of it near their kids’ desks. They’re not afraid of technology. Many of them work in Microsoft and Amazon buildings, designing the very systems that they are currently attempting to keep out of sixth-grade classrooms. More than anything else, that gives you a true sense of the direction this moment is taking. The movement…