HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — Can we fix the childcare crisis by reshaping how we define early education? The author of a book called "The Daycare Myth" thinks so.
Dan Wuori sat down with me a few weeks ago. He was the keynote speaker at the Education of Young Children Summit, hosted by the Early Learning Coalition of Hillsborough County.
WATCH full report by Heather Leigh
He said that as Mom prepares for her baby’s arrival, her baby is also preparing for the outside world by soaking up loads of information.
“Babies are born already able to recognize their mother's voice and to distinguish it from those of strangers, to distinguish the rhythms and the patterns of their mother's native language," Wuori said. "That changes very fundamentally the way we think about education in this country.”
Currently, Wuori believes it’s viewed more as an “industrialized” form of babysitting.
“We think of school being this place where children begin learning at age 5, but for younger children, we have maybe something lesser," he said. "That is contradicted at this point by decades of brain science.”
Wuori is a former kindergarten teacher. He knows a lot about kids and their development because he’s seen it first hand, and with what we know now, he said our next step, “requires a real rethink of who we employ in these roles, how we respect those who work with infants and toddlers, and you know how we train and compensate them.”
Of course, the big question is how?
“As I talk to policymakers around the country, it’s interesting, they are increasingly saying to me, I think we've done a good job of articulating in a lot of ways the brain science," he said. "But their question now is, how do we pay for it, right? My answer to them would be that we are already paying for the system that we need for children and families, but that we are doing it truly in the dumbest possible ways."
Wuori thinks taxpayer money would be better spent on enriching a child’s early learning rather than the latter, like we seem to be doing now.
"We may be more content to pay for more prisons, that we are content to have worse academic outcomes, that we are content to have worse health outcomes, and that we are content to supporting adults who are more reliant on social welfare programs than the research suggests that they need to be," he said.
The “Education of Young Children Summit” brought together business and community leaders to hear about the importance of investing in early learning.
“We really want to get the word out to our business leaders that early learning is a crisis," said Aakash Patel, the Chair of the Early Learning Coalition of Hillsborough County. "We have seen that during the pandemic. We've talked about it for years, and now we need to do something about it and have some financial support.”
Patel said it's important for businesses to advocate policy changes when it comes to early learning, and he said there’s always a need for volunteers.
“Just raise your hand, follow us on social media, and come to one of our events, and just say, 'hey, I would like to volunteer for a couple of hours just to read to kids. It makes a difference in these children's lives.'"
To learn more about Dan Wuori and his book, click here.
To get in touch with the Early Learning Coalition of Hillsborough County, click here.
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