Think about sending your 4-year-old to preschool figuring out they are going to spend almost all day fortunately traipsing by the woods, climbing timber and resting in hammocks. Think about that additionally they participate in what most of us would view as dangerous actions for a preschooler, like constructing fires and utilizing knives to whittle figures out of sticks. For kids rising up in Norway, it is a each day actuality within the nation’s “barnehagen”: baby care applications designed for kids ages 1 by 6.
In Norway, childhood is seen as a time of innate worth that should be joyful and revered. Early studying — particularly involving out of doors play — is a part of that. The nation has enshrined the suitable to baby care into legislation and calls for that early studying applications be rooted in “tolerance and respect” and educate values like empathy, charity and “a perception in human value.”
The nation is so dedicated to early childhood schooling, it covers the overwhelming majority of working prices and subsidizes care for folks, who pay the equal of about $190 monthly for the primary baby in care, and fewer for added kids in care. Kids are assured a spot in baby care at age 1.
Sounds idyllic, proper? In April, as a Spencer Training Journalism Fellow at Columbia College, I traveled to Oslo to see it for myself. Over the course of every week, I frolicked in 9 totally different kindergartens to study extra about how Norwegians view the early years, how the nation’s strategy to early studying contends with a altering social demographic, and what the remainder of us can study from Norway. I returned hopeful and rejuvenated, but in addition with a higher sense of urgency about America’s want to handle our personal strategy to baby care. You may learn the story, which was printed in partnership with The Christian Science Monitor, by clicking the hyperlink beneath.
This story about Norwegian kids was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, impartial information group targeted on inequality and innovation in schooling. Join the Hechinger e-newsletter.
