I was deeply disappointed that discussions about early childhood education in the article “Should three-year-olds be in school all day?” [April 24–May 1] still circle aimlessly around questions about play versus teaching the alphabet and early learning versus childcare. It is time to change the discourse and to acknowledge and accept the educational rights of young children.

In countries such as New Zealand and Sweden, the transfer of early childhood to the ministry of education was looked upon as an opportunity for change and not a cause for panic. Early childhood activists, advocates, and scholars got together to express what they regarded as quality early childhood education, creating a vision for childhood.

What is missing from the conversations that we are having in our province is a broader vision for what early childhood institutions might be. Kindergartens for young children can be places where children are valued as creative and competent members of society, where learning is not merely acquisition of basic skills but allows and encourages inquiry and critical thinking, and where children’s imagination, effort, and curiosity are valued.

If we are, indeed, ready to admit as a province that there is a growing significance and need for “institutions” in early childhood, then we need to ask questions about what type of childhood might result and about both the opportunities and the risks that are involved in such enterprise.

> Iris Berger / Institute of early childhood education and research, UBC

The YWCA has been providing and advocating for quality “early learning and care” for decades. We use that term, in all its ambiguity, because of the persistent tendency to polarize this issue as illustrated by your article “Should three-year-olds be in school all day?”.

Care, as in childcare, is too easily misinterpreted as safe custody—protection from harm and feeding inappropriately, keeping clean and warm—in a word, babysitting. Education conjures up images of children sitting in neat rows of little desks, eyes trained on the “teacher”.

We have known for years—and ongoing advances in neuroscience reinforce—that quality care of children in the first six years of their lives is, by definition, education, with lifelong significance. To steal a phrase from a recent book, each baby is a “scientist in the crib” struggling to make sense of the world.

In the 2008 throne speech, our provincial government stated its intention to assess the feasibility of full-day kindergarten for three-, four-, and five-year-olds in B.C. This important initiative is in its earliest stages and it deserves our support.

> Janet Austin / CEO, YWCA Vancouver