D

Déjà Vu
by Sandra Griffin

We shall not cease from exploration
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time.
Little Gidding, T.S.Elliot

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been experiencing a bit of déjà vu lately. Having been in this field for over 26 years, I have had ample opportunity to read and write about issues in early childhood education and care—and I notice that some of what I am reading now, many of us were writing 25 years ago.

I review a brief that the Okanagan Coalition for Child Care wrote protesting reduction in training program hours at community colleges over 20 years ago—where we talked about the importance of the early years—and the necessity to have well-trained, committed individuals working with young children in these most important formative years.

I read the National Children’s Agenda statement put out in 1999 by the federal and provincial/territorial governments that “the quality of care children receive in their early years directly affects the way they think and learn, and has a lasting impact on their future abilities” (p.2).

And in the recent federal budget speech, Finance Minister Paul Martin noted: “In October 1999, Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial Ministers of Social Services undertook to work with their health colleagues to move forward as quickly as possible on the early childhood component of the Children’s Agenda. As the next step in advancing the Children’s Agenda, the federal government, as it did in its 1999 Speech from the Throne, invites all governments to work together to reach agreement by December 2000 on a national action plan to support early childhood development. This plan would set out common principles, objectives and fiscal parameters for all governments to increase their support for early childhood services.”

And I think to myself—in every federal election in the last 15 years or more, there have been promises to act on this issue, and to date, nothing has come to fruition, regardless of the party in power. So we begin, yet again, to organize at the community level to try and make something happen, because the early years are so very important. This could get depressing...

But taking Elliot’s words to heart, we may yet again be at the same place we’ve been many times before, but I do think we have all learned much in the ensuing years. And what we have learned only serves to enrich what we can offer to creating and maintaining an early childhood education and care system that truly supports and enhances the lives of children and families in Canada.

This is very evident in the articles you will read in this volume of Interaction. Friendly notes that, “This year, the challenge will be to urge our governments to muster the imagination and the political will to ‘do the right thing’ to move vision to reality.” I could not agree more.

Sandra Griffin is the executive director of the CCCF.

Interaction, Vol. 14, No. 2, Summer 2000, p. 19-20.