Author Description

This book argues that the worldwide trend of turning children into 'early learners' at ever younger ages is detrimental to their well-being and healthy development. Instead, Early Childhood Development (ECD) efforts should foremost be a 'culturising' endeavor. Culturised ECD should be seen as an enjoyable and wholesome process that challenges and engages children. It fosters their curiosity and eagerness to be active and to explore. Culturised ECD enables children to use their faculties, talents, and skills, and it contributes to their development as well-rounded persons, since it helps them in valuing, searching for, finding, contributing to, and creating beauty and meaning in life. Culturised ECD offers an appreciation for the connectedness of things organic and inorganic. It is the totality of such activities that enables young girls and boys to participate in things that are meaningful, pleasing, and good, recognizing that ECD is all-encompassing and should therefore be much more than providing children with 'schooling.' The following issues are addressed in the book: the effect on the well-being of children (regardless of their future, inside or outside the school or employment market) * the impact on the long-term development of children (do they become more resilient, experience fewer obstacles when enrolling in formal basic education, and, when adults, will they fare better, socially, and economically?) * the relevance when faced with such 'hot topics' as violence, discrimination, and social exclusion * reducing poverty and inequality. [Subject: Early Childhood Development, Education]