Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Junior kindergarten, or JK, is becoming our worst fear before the first child is in place. Putting preschoolers at desks, plans to merge them with kindergarten and grades 1, 2 and 3, in some communities; developing a combined curriculum for both JK and kindergarten that fails to distinguish developmentally between four and five-year-olds; JK start-ups before fully trained childhood educators are in place, as if study after study after study has not identified the essential need for high quality programs, at the risk of allowing an achievement gap that can last a lifetime.
Mr. Speaker, any attempt to postpone this program on merit is perceived or portrayed as an attack on small communities by Ministers or small community colleagues as if we don’t really care about children in small communities. This is insulting. We care about all children deeply in all our communities and thus the passionate pleas. There is clear evidence that if we get this wrong, we will be hurting children instead of helping them.
Rather than support the existing community services currently available for four-year-olds across the NWT, ECE is saying too bad, we’ll give you a few bucks for toys and you’re switched to two and three-year-olds. Instead, we should be focusing on zero to three early childhood development where the desperate need for addressing the achievement gap in early childhood development is many times that of at four years of age.
We’ve heard this week about the hollow communication ECE has with the Aboriginal Head Start staff. Let’s collaborate, they say, as they crush and render uneconomic these and similar services, as if a few toys make an ECD Program and care provider for children zero to three. You do it, ECE says to these current providers for four-year-olds. We’ll take over the easy stuff.
Jack Shonkoff, a leading early childhood development scientist in North America, says, while JK is better than starting at age five, by age four children are so old in terms of brain development that the big opportunities are lost. Much more critical are the ages zero to three and specifically working with the adults who provide care for these very young children.
Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted
