From the chapter ‘The early years‘
Leslee Udwin, Film producer and director
We live in a world lurching from one crisis to the next. We are drowning in an onslaught of relentless images of inhumanity and fabricated facts. Many seem to have lost hope and seem to live in a fog of despair that it is too late and too bleak for things to change for the better.
We do, however, have the opportunity to rethink and recalibrate our priorities. As a child when hiding from Nazis during the Second World War, Anne Frank, in her own hell of violence and enforced lockdown, said: ‘Look at how a single candle can define and defy the dark.’[i]
It is rather poignant that today our candle of hope is our children. However, while it is widely accepted that numeracy and literacy should be two mandatory pillars of education, social and emotional learning is a missing, yet critical, pillar. Learning and having experience of creating meaningful and secure relationships is vital to keeping that candle burning bright, and ought to be an equal load-bearing pillar of early years education.
If children across the globe are educated in ways that help them grow into compassionate, empathetic and inclusive adults, our future and the future of our planet will be assured.
Keeping the candle burning bright
The toxic consequences of ingrained culture and inflexible mindsets can be seen in my films Who Bombed Birmingham?, East Is East and India’s Daughter.[ii] Alongside learning to read, write and count, young children must also learn to play, love, accept, understand, include and collaborate. This experience and knowledge led me to set up Think Equal and to campaign for system change in early years education.
Think Equal is both a movement and a concrete programme of narrative picture books, prescriptive lesson plans and accompanying resources that have been designed collectively by experts in psychology, gender equity, neuroscience, human rights and education. The charity provides young children with the tools to help develop empathetic foundations, emotional regulation, love for humanity, celebration of diversity, and a primary belief system based on equality of the value of each and every human being, which they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.
The role of government
My call to governments across the globe is to embed social and emotional learning into the fabric of their early years’ curricula. Some are answering that call, for example North Macedonia, Belize and the Gambia have included the Think Equal programme in their national curricula. Every single five-year-old in these countries now learns 25 prosocial competencies and skills for positive life outcomes. The whole Eastern Cape Province of South Africa (4,100 reception classrooms, with some 168,000 children) is also on course to implement at full scale this new subject three times a week throughout the school year. Although we are funded in the Eastern Cape, it takes time to fully equip 4,100 classrooms, however, and we will finish only in 2024. Mexico, Colombia, India, Malawi, Spain, Wales and England are seriously engaged with Think Equal, and are working towards implementing it at scale.
Yet the English education system remains firmly rooted in the origins of its purpose and design, which were in and for the Industrial Revolution. Filling factories was the model, and ‘children should be seen and not heard’ was the culture. However, in recent major developments, the combined authority of Greater Manchester is offering the Think Equal programme with funds from its School Readiness funding, as well as from National Health Service mental health funding, to every one of the 1,300 reception classes (four- to five-year-olds) across its ten districts. Furthermore, having been shocked by the serious deficit in developmental ages and stages of its post-pandemic infants, it has now extended the programme to nurseries in the region, with funding from the Violent Reduction Unit, allied to the police.
Programmes like Think Equal delivered to every three- to six-year-old child in England would cost less than one-half of 1 per cent[iii] of the £105 billion[iv] spent annually on mental health disorders. This investment would help children grow up with positive life outcomes and fulfil their potential as responsible, empathetic, inclusive and equal global citizens.
Our children are becoming inured to selfishness, violence and discrimination. The evidence shows what is possible, and programmes such as Think Equal provide the tools for content. The government must now step up and mandate an educational curriculum for the early years with literacy, numeracy and social emotional learning at its very core. We owe it to a peaceful future for coming generations. This is not rocket science, but neuroscience.
Notes
[i] Frank, A. (2003) The Diary of Anne Frank: The Revised Critical Edition, New York: Doubleday Books.
[ii] IMDB (no date) ‘Leslee Udwin’, www.imdb.com/name/nm0879889
[iii] Think Equal estimates that its programme could be rolled out to all three- to six-year-olds in England for £14.4 million as a one-off cost, with materials lasting for at least ten years.
[iv] Full Fact (no date) ‘Does mental ill health cost £105 billion a year?’, 15 February, https://fullfact.org/health/does-mental-ill-health-cost-105-billion-year