Author: Nelson Rosario

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…

Tracing a line from Prague in 1948 to Rabat in 2027 has an almost cinematic quality. One organization is subtly bridging the gap between two cities, two eras, and nearly eight decades apart. The early childhood education community took notice when the World Organization for Early Childhood Education, or OMEP, announced that it would host its World Conference in Morocco’s capital for the first time in its existence. It’s the kind of choice that makes a statement even before the meeting starts. In 1948, OMEP was founded in Prague during the first World Conference on Early Childhood, which brought together…

The shape of early childhood education in New Zealand is quietly negotiated in a room somewhere in Wellington, most likely with fluorescent lighting and a whiteboard covered in policy language that no one outside the sector will ever read. The decisions made there don’t make news. Seldom does it. However, the ramifications of those discussions, particularly with regard to language, identity, and who gets to define quality instruction, start to garner significant attention on a global scale. One of the more stable voices in those rooms has been OMEP Aotearoa New Zealand, the local branch of the World Organization for…