Guest contribution by Renate Harnacke
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Why Mönchengladbach needs a master plan for early childhood education
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Children’s painting with a kindergarten teacher.
Photo: Lars Fröhlich
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Mönchengladbach Every third child in the city grows up in poverty. Many of them lack coordination and language skills before starting school. Our guest author explains why early intervention and intensive support are important.
Mönchengladbach has a lot to offer: a dignified, long history with a magnificent cathedral, an internationally known museum, a lot of greenery, a textile history that used to lead to prosperity and is now facing a kind of “new edition”, a number of celebrities and, of course, Borussia.
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Pediatrician Renate Harnacke at her desk in the practice
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Photo: Reichartz, Hans-Peter (hpr) / Reichartz, Hans-Peter (hpr)
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And yet many people who like to live and work in Mönchengladbach always have a strong disturbing feeling, namely that there is also something essential that is not right in the city. In many places you can see and feel that Mönchengladbach is a city with a very high number of transfer recipients. Every third child here grows up in poverty – in Germany it is only every fifth child.
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These circumstances are one of the main reasons why a far too high number of children who queue up for school are not ready for school. The children lack coordination and linguistic skills to cope with the cautious demands of first grade. It is more than understandable that these children cannot develop a joy in learning in school, often “switch off”, and sometimes even mutate into a kind of “class clown”.
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In the third and fourth grades, these children are often unable to read even less demanding texts in a meaningful way. How are they ever supposed to be able to capture letters to them, for example from insurance companies or banks?
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When they arrive in secondary school or in community school and in puberty, learning is then often rejected in such a way that the young people remain without a school leaving certificate. They are often unsuitable for the training market, and all that remains is for them to exist as transfer recipients. In Mönchengladbach there is a very high number of families who have been receiving transfers for generations.
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How can that be? Aren’t we paying EUR 60 million a year for help with education? We should have achieved success by this long ago. Unfortunately, there is still a lack of sustainable and verifiable progress here. The number of those who cannot fulfill their educational tasks is still too high. For several years now, the city authorities have been using socio-pedagogically trained staff as outreach aids. It is observed how this higher qualification affects the results compared to earlier. One can safely assume that this higher qualification leads to better training of the parents, along with a higher probability of “getting out of the vicious circle” of the families.
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What can we do earlier, i.e. in early childhood education, in order to have our children ready for school at the age of six? We should do everything in our power to create a “master plan for early childhood education”. When a child “announces” themselves, every parent is maximally motivated to do everything possible for this child to make him feel well. Even during pregnancy, it is helpful to have groups that communicate with each other how important the beginning is. Courses started in the prenatal period are easy to continue with the young infants – so-called Pekip groups teach a lot to train the child’s important perceptions, combined with a good bond between parent and child – a very important prerequisite for a successful relationship and Education.
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At the latest by the age of three, every child should then have a place in a day care center. The number of places has increased significantly recently. Now it is important to fill the places with a structured, targeted quality so that as much as possible 100 percent of the children are also ready for school. A clear language development curriculum combined with exercise, such as the Marte Meo method, is conceivable. Here, employees from every daycare center should be trained to pass on their knowledge to their colleagues. Regular checks should be made to see where the children are in their development. If, as has been customary in the Neuss district for many years, an additional check of the future school ability can take place at the age of five in order to have some time for any necessary corrections, then the goal is that all those who are to be schooled, with exceptions, really also are capable of learning, nothing in the way. Then from the third grade onwards the children will be able to read meaningfully, enjoy learning, be able to build up their skills in secondary schools, be “fit” for further education and achieve self-efficacy that will make them satisfied and be able to earn money earn to pay taxes and to change the social structure in Mönchengladbach for the better.
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The time is more than ripe to “tackle” the topic.
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