For over 60 years, educators in Buenos Aires have been debating, organizing, and sometimes yelling about the same thing: that Argentina’s youngest children deserve better. The building isn’t particularly impressive from the outside. Most passersby wouldn’t look at it twice. However, something tenacious and unexpectedly significant has been developing inside, or at least in the network that emanates from organizations such as it.
Since the 1960s, Argentina has been home to the World Organization for Early Childhood Education, or OMEP as it is known abroad. It’s worth pausing to consider that. 60 years in a nation that has experienced a pandemic, hyperinflation, military dictatorship, and currency collapse. Resilience is not being able to continue operating in the face of all of that. It’s more akin to rebellion.
Even before COVID-19, Argentina was a challenging place for young children without resources. At best, access to high-quality care services was highly unfair, and at worst, it was largely determined by your parents’ income and place of birth. These disparities weren’t caused by the pandemic; rather, it eliminated the things that were concealing them. Millions of children from marginalized communities who were already on the periphery of a deteriorating care system suddenly had even less. Organizations like OMEP had been urging a reckoning for decades, but no one really wanted to hear it until the crisis forced it.
Argentina’s approach to early childhood policy seems to have always been reactive, moving quickly when crises call for it and straying when they don’t. Organizations with sixty-year histories are unique because they retain the institutional memory that governments typically lose in between administrations. They recall the promise. They are aware of the programs that were covertly defunded in 2003 and reopened in 2015 under a new name. Officials find that type of information unsettling. It’s also priceless.
Regardless of your stance on policy, the numbers are depressing. Approximately 2.7 million of Argentina’s 5.2 million children reside in vulnerable communities. It’s not a rounding error. It’s a structural reality that affects everything from language development to a child’s chances of finishing secondary school decades later. Recent studies on Argentina’s massive preschool expansion in the 1990s have demonstrated how long-lasting the benefits of early investment can last, increasing completed education and even influencing fertility rates. The case for investing in early childhood is not idealistic. It is supported by statistics that are difficult for economists to reject.
It’s difficult to ignore a pattern in the way the government has handled this over time: organizations push, administrations eventually react, credit is redistributed, and the organizations resume their push. A major step was the National Early Childhood Strategy, which was backed by UN organizations like UNICEF and UNDP. It trained thousands of childcare providers in various provinces and created a Federal Care Map to monitor service availability. However, such political will takes time to develop. Years of pressure from those who refused to move on to something simpler cause it to gradually build up.
It’s a long time to be concerned about the same thing for sixty years. That might be the exact description of sustained focus: unglamorous, monotonous, and sometimes frustrating. Children in Argentina might not be aware of the groups advocating for them. Nevertheless, the battle goes on.
