Author: Nelson Rosario

Tom Holland’s journey to this point is truly unique. Not only to Spider-Man and Hollywood, but also to the type of actor who enters a New York City high school full of future Nobel laureates and takes a seat like any other student. His educational journey is not a clear-cut narrative. Along the way, it doubles back on itself, bends, and goes through a few unexpected rooms. Holland began his early education at Donhead Preparatory School, an all-male Catholic prep school in Wimbledon, after being born in Kingston upon Thames in 1996. He received a dyslexia diagnosis when he was…

The fact that one of Hollywood’s most well-known actors never completed high school has a subtle allure. Despite having a General Equivalency Diploma, or GED, instead of a traditional degree, Leonardo DiCaprio’s portrayal of characters over the course of three decades of film suggests a completely different kind of education. DiCaprio may have learned more from the chaos of early auditions and the streets of Echo Park than from any classroom. Born in 1974 in Los Angeles, DiCaprio’s parents were “bohemian in every sense of the word.” His mother was a German-born legal secretary, and his father was an underground…

Early childhood education has a feature that is simple to ignore. From the outside, it may appear straightforward: taking care of young children, organizing events, and keeping small people busy and safe. The majority of people don’t give the true nature of the situation much thought. However, Seneca Polytechnic’s accomplishments over the last fifty years quickly disprove this assumption. The Early Childhood Education diploma program at Seneca has been in existence for over half a century. You shouldn’t ignore that particular detail. In higher education, a program’s longevity typically indicates that it has withstood budget cuts, policy changes, and the…

Chiaravalle is a small town on the Adriatic coast of Italy. It’s the kind of location that is rarely mentioned in historical accounts. The kind of peaceful rural existence that seldom yields anyone the world remembers is characterized by small stone buildings and narrow streets. Nevertheless, Maria Montessori was born there on August 31, 1870, and that peaceful location unknowingly gave birth to one of the most influential individuals in educational history. Alessandro, her father, was a civil service accountant who was dependable, respectable, and unremarkable. Renilde Stoppani, her mother, was a completely different person. Renilde was a perceptive mother…

Going back and reading a piece of journalism that proved to be accurate has a subtly remarkable quality. Good reporting sometimes manages to be right in a subtle, almost accidental way, rather than loudly, prophetically correct, the kind of thing people quote years later. What appeared to be a fairly standard organizational update from OMEP Aotearoa was covered in a 2010 article on Scoop, New Zealand’s independent news platform. It reads more like a blueprint now that everything that came after has been taken into account. The World Organization for Early Childhood Education’s New Zealand branch, OMEP Aotearoa, was already…

When education is brought up in political discussions in Buenos Aires, there is a certain kind of tension that permeates the city. It is more intense than regular debate, as if everyone in the nation feels that something fundamental is at risk. That sensation has returned. Additionally, educators outside of Argentina have taken notice of it this time. Argentina took a truly audacious step in 1882. Educators and politicians convened at the First Argentine Pedagogical Congress to vehemently and extensively argue that the State owed every child, whether they were wealthy or poor, immigrants or native-born, a seat in a…

Looking at a list of cities that have hosted OMEP’s World Conferences over the years is subtly illuminating. Paris, Athens. Bangkok, Quebec. Bologna will follow in 2025. The list is cosmopolitan, but it is biased in some ways, much like a well-traveled diplomat’s passport. And if you look closely enough, you begin to wonder exactly who is establishing the agenda for the youngest students in the world. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed in 1948, the same year OMEP, the World Organization for Early Childhood Education, was established. It wasn’t a coincidence. Early childhood education is a right,…

In many respects, it began with a princess and a pandemic. In 2020, HRH Princess Laurentien came forward and urged UNESCO to take action in order to safeguard the world’s youngest children, whose education and care had been quietly collapsing due to COVID-19. At the time, it seemed like a long shot. Budgets were getting smaller, governments were overburdened, and early childhood programs are rarely the most influential. However, something shifted. In order to determine what a serious, coordinated global response might actually entail, UNESCO arranged three high-level meetings that brought together ministry representatives, agency heads, and experts from all…

A four-year-old is sitting through her first structured lesson in a classroom somewhere on the outskirts of Marrakech. The classroom is small, likely underfunded by Western standards, and the walls have just been painted in the upbeat colors that teachers always seem to choose. In 2018, she would not have been present. She most likely wouldn’t have been, according to statistics. Less than half of Morocco’s four to six-year-old children attended preschool at the time. You can learn everything about the origins of the nation from that number. It was chosen for OMEP’s 2027 World Conference on Early Childhood Education…

A certain type of publication doesn’t make a big deal out of it. It doesn’t send press packets to education desks or run advertising campaigns. It just quietly and steadily publishes, and eventually the most vulnerable people discover it. The Theory Into Practice journal published by OMEP is beginning to resemble that type of publication, one that arrives without fanfare and remains unapologetic. The OMEP Executive Committee decided that there was a gap in the global discourse on early childhood education, which led to the creation of the journal in June 2017. not absent in the manner that necessitates press…