5 Foundations of Any Child’s Education

Child’s Education Foundations “Is the education of a child important?” This might just be the most ridiculous and obvious question ever asked. Ask any parent this question and for sure, you will get the same answer again and again. However, if the question had asked for the reason behind this importance, there will, without a doubt, be many different answers. One parent may say “So he will be able to easily get a job”. Another may say that it is important so that his child will learn responsibility. Another reason could be that the child’s learning will help him make good decisions. Parents have countless other reasons for a child’s education but ultimately, they mean the same thing—to prepare the child for adulthood.

Some might disagree with this; in fact, many parents do not want to think of adulthood yet, saying they do not want their children to grow up fast. Well nobody said anything about reaching adulthood fast. Rather, it is progressing from childhood and growing up to be adults. You have to bear in mind that in the end, only two things can happen: your child grows up with you, with your guidance, or your child grows up without you, guided by his friends. Which ending do you want for your child?

Surely, you want your child to grow up guided by you. If you are to prepare them to become responsible adults, you must make them learn, understand and live by five essential things. The proper education of a child involves the teaching of values, morals, ethics, problem-solving, and decision-making.

Values are the feelings, thoughts and opinions which your family has determined important. The values of one family may, of course, differ from those of another. A child needs to learn what the things he values are. Morals refer to what things are right and what are wrong. Usually, our morals are shaped by a bigger community’s standards and beliefs. Every child must be able to distinguish right from wrong. Ethics refer to the ideology of how one should behave. These are the principles of conduct and manners. A child will follow what he sees. If parents are not there to show the child how one should rightfully behave, he will then follow those whom he sees; he will pattern the way his peers behave.

Problem solving is the ability to come up with a solution for a particular task or difficulty AND the ability to do everything required to carry it out. Knowing that sand can put out a spreading fire is useless if you do not know where and how to get that sand. A child must be able to determine what must be done with a problem and know to do it. Lastly, decision-making is the ability to make sound decisions that will be for the betterment of all. A good decision is one that is based on the first four essential principles. A child must learn have the ability to make good judgments and sound decisions so that he will be able to determine which direction to follow.

These five elements shape the entire education of a child. Without these five, your child may grow physically and biologically, but he will never grow from being a child to becoming an adult.

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Fundamentals of Early Childhood Education

Anyone who’s driven north from downtown Wausau toward Bridge Street may have seen the billboard there featuring the smiling face of a young child and the word “YoungStar.”

The relatively new program of the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families is designed to be a resource for parents and to create a system of incentives for child care providers. The state rates child care providers that receive state subsidies based on a number of different assessments largely focused on how they approach early childhood education. The state provides help for providers to improve their ratings, and there’s a financial incentive, too: Those who score highly receive more state tax credits; those with low scores can lose funding.

YoungStar got a big boost last week when Wisconsin won a $22.7 million grant in federal Race to the Top funding to be spent in the next four years on expanding the program and improving its data collection system.

As our understanding of brain development has become more sophisticated in recent years, the importance of early childhood education has been amplified. Young brains — from birth to four or five years old — are building connections and forming habits that have the potential to have long-term effects.

One way that’s measured is in what’s called “readiness,” a measure of the skills children bring with them when they enter kindergarten. Those who start kindergarten at a disadvantage can struggle to catch up even a decade or more into the future.

Another way to think about this is that kindergarten is not some magical threshold: Learning doesn’t begin when a child is enrolled in kindergarten. Creating the right environment for a child to learn literally begins in the womb, and proceeds at exponential pace throughout early childhood. We need an education system that recognizes that.

In Wausau, the Marathon County Early Years Coalition is a group of many different local organizations tackling this issue. Parents or anyone interested in seeing ratings of local child care providers can go to http://dcf.wisconsin.gov/youngstar/ to find YoungStar online.

There are not many more foundational goals than improving early childhood education. It’s good to see Wisconsin’s system given a boost, and we all can hope this grant will help Wisconsin’s children move forward.

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