 We Europeans have invented a lot of things. Waffles, rare-roads, ferris wheels, postal coats, the senet. Hot water bottles were actually invented by the Croatians, not the English even though the English are happy to claim hot water itself. Europeans are responsible for dry batteries, 1700,000 types of tulips, saunas, parliaments and the cassette tape. Gas masks and the reason why we need gas masks. Lobotomies, cheese knives, cotton swabs, yacht clubs, vodka, the body mass index and genocide. Now we're not equally proud of all of these but there's one thing we can all boast about and without a doubt and that's kindergarten. When the parents bring the child to us, to the teacher, they trust us. The Hungarian split system is not so bad. I'm so happy to hear that something is actually good. We have great examples and heartbreaking examples. Which one shall I give? Well, all of them. So parents were like, wow, our opinions matter, we talk about feelings, this is interesting, I'm scared but oh there are cards, let's see. I did literally cry on the shoulder of the nursery pedagogue of my kid when I was going through a hard time and she was like really telling me like it's an okay job that you're doing is like really that's a category. Hello and welcome to Standard Time. Today we're dissecting the world of early childhood education in Europe. I'm Réka Kingopop, a devoted kindergarten alumna and the editor-in-chief of EuroZine, the magazine bringing you this show. EuroZine is an online magazine connecting more than a hundred cultural journals with an international audience. We are also the co-founder of the Display Europe platform, where you can find content from all over Europe in mental languages and from many different viewpoints. Deikeer, kreisch, nursery, kindergartens, among a myriad of forms and institutions, early childhood education can be a heaven on earth when it works well or a hellscape when it dysfunctions. The landscape varies widely across Europe, from the school superpower Finland to arch-capitalist Britain, from the world of free school meals and beeswax crayons to the privatization of family policy. A few factors are constant across the spectrum though. Early childhood education is an absolute necessity for most families and it defines the entire academic career of the kid who gets to enjoy it. What we recognize today as nurseries and kindergartens originate from early 19th century experiments. One of them would be Robert Owens infant school in Scotland, which opened in 1816. That is, Brunswick championed angel gardens in Hungary starting in 1828. Friedrich Röbel is responsible for the term kindergarten itself, because his gardens for children started out in today's Germany in 1840. The idea soon crossed the oceans. The first public school kindergarten opened in 1870 in St. Louis, USA, but by the 1880s there were over 400 kindergartens in 30 US states. See? What works works. Today this professional field serves a complex function, integrating children of varying abilities and backgrounds. They are experimenting with methodologies. They enable working families to even exist. These institutions develop skills and screen for difficulties, including a bunch of disabilities. They socialize and support children's personal development, foster intellectual and emotional growth, and produce literal tons of macaroni art. They integrate minorities and refugees teach language in manners and once a year, on Mother's Day, they make me ugly cry. However, it's not all rainbows and unicorns in the early education realm. Across Europe, many countries have been continually reducing their spending on education since the 1990s. This puts increasing strain on the professionals. From the family's perspective, the cost of childcare can be a significant burden. In some European countries, like Germany or Austria, the offer is relatively good due to the state's support and freely available kindergartens in big cities. Whereas in the UK, families might spend up to 65% of their paycheck only to cover the cost of childcare, which is a crucial condition for them to even be able to earn a living. All that is to say, early childhood education plays a tremendous part in supporting families and children's development. They are a cornerstone of society and in many places across the continent, they need more support than they currently have. Today, we have remarkable guests to delve into the topic. Victoria Such is the president of the Democratic Trade Union of Croatian employees in Hungary. She's a loyal advocate for enhancing the professional landscape for pedagogues, ensuring that they have the resources and the support to nurture our kids. Maria Roth is the director of the Montessori Adult Education Center in Munich, who also trains kindergarten teachers. Last but definitely not least, we have Flora Baccio from Partners Hungary, who's invested in the integration of Roma pupils into education systems. Each of our guests has a different take on childcare in Europe and we're excited to hear what they have to say. Stick around as we dive into the world of early education, looking at what works and how we can make things better for our kids. Very welcome. Thank you so much for joining us, ladies. Please, let's collect a couple of aspects what early childhood education does beyond the obvious warehousing of children, which sounds horrible, but there is actually like a function that in terms of governments thinking or institutions thinking about early childhood education, what are the responsibilities of these institutions? Early childhood is a very sensitive period of the children and it's very important to the good quality of the childcare centers. The children get a lot of attention, for example, from the childcare workers and they get a kind of socialization and they learn how can eat alone, for example, or how can take a clothes alone because it's a learning method. The childcare institution can give a special help for the vulnerable families and for the special needs children because the early childhood education and care workers has a knowledge, a different knowledge. Inclusion was the first thing that came to my mind, so I would like to pick up on that. Ideally, should be a place where children can feel, children and their families, caregivers, can feel included regardless of their social status, their abilities, their gender, etc. cultural background and also it should be a place where professionals are fit and are equipped of screening for a typical developmental science if there's any support needed and also ECC centers in paper should also function as part of the Child Protection Network. That basically means that the professionals in these institutions pick up on the signs of a child, for instance, being abused or get or neglected. Yes. Maria, in the Montessori method, which you are an expert of, the child is and its development and its stages of development are always in the center to see the child, to observe the child. But what can we see? We can see the movement and then there is a development in moving, in speaking and what is very important that will give the child freedom that they can exercise and we should not always or not so many times interrupt the child because the child needs time, possibilities to exercise and we know the child adapt to his environment. Some children need more time to develop, some children are slowly, some children need more help. So we have to adapt to the ability, to the natural ability of a child and many people do not know the sensitive periods and so on. So Montessori gave us the idea that nature has given a lot of gifts to the child that the child can develop but we have to assist the child and not always the child has to do what I think, what I expect. This is the biggest problem. Hey there, let me just flag you up. Someone who has a personal favorite of mine, easily the favorite podcaster of mine in the whole wild world. She's a colleague and a partner, Claire Potter, a professor emeritus of history from the new school for social research in New York. She was the co-founder of Public Seminar, one of our partners in the EuroZ network and her sub-stack called Political Junkie and her podcast called Why Now Are Fantastic. So if you like these kinds of in-depth and entertaining conversations, you're going to love everything that Claire does. Subscribe to her sub-stack, listen to her podcast and just tell her that you love her because she deserves all good things in the world. Now I'm back to the program. Let's talk about the differences across Europe, nation states and systems also because across Europe we have very, very different setups. Some EU country has a split system or unitary system. A split system means there is a different institution and different authorities and legislation from the different ages. It's usually the two parts of the age group. There's the first one from zero to three. It's a nursery or a crash and another from three to six. This is a kindergarten age. For example, in Hungary we have a split system. If I know well in Germany we have a unitary system and the North countries, for example in Finland, the Norwegian and Swedish is a unitary system as well. Those countries where has a unitary system is much more better than that. The service and the quality and the development of the children or following the children development is much more better. The unit in the unitary system. The split system has a big differences but I think the Hungarian split system is not so bad. I think it's a good one. I'm so happy to hear that something is actually good. Because I see some other countries it's more expensive and not available for the all parents and not the well qualified workers and so has a lot of problem. And what do we know about what early childhood education costs across Europe? Because that to my poor knowledge varies wildly. Like in some places, let's say including many post socialist countries, you would have access to nurseries, kindergartens however you call them at some expense but you wouldn't necessarily pay the kinds of fees as you do in the United Kingdom. Yes, it's an expensive in the UK but for example in Finland it's for even and if I know in Germany has a mixed system because there is a free availability and another is a lot of parents pay the child care fee. So it's a big differences between the countries so it's not an equal level. So in the European Commission on Childhood Education and Care Working Group we try to find the balance between the countries and we try to incentivize the countries to make good quality child care free for the parents everywhere. So I think it's a long distance work. When we talk about freely available early childhood education there is a very strong class element that the children who need this integration step also have to be able to well not afford it but access it. So how do these systems actually work? How well do these European integration systems work? We have great examples and heartbreaking examples which one shall I give? Well all of them. For example a very personal experience the kindergarten where my son went functions with a pedagogical program that's really designed for life meaning taking children as they are in whole. And so it resulted in a very diverse group of children and teachers made everybody feel welcome. And also we've heard examples of Roma parents where they remember when they went to kindergarten like 20 years ago or 30 years ago kindergarten teachers considered them slow or not as intelligent as the majority of the kids just because this kindergarten was their first place where they had to speak Hungarian and if the family conserved Roma traditions and spoke one of the Romani languages as the first language children worked very hard to translate what they wanted to say into Hungarian. And just this knowledge that this child is just slowly adapting to a language gap was missing from some of the kindergarten teachers. This program is presented by EuroZine an online magazine offering insightful reads from over a hundred partner publications across numerous European languages. To support our work and enjoy exclusive benefits from as little as three euros a month visit patreon.com slash EuroZine and become a supporter. Maria you already mentioned that the Montessori method puts a huge emphasis on accommodating children's actual needs on an individual basis. You teach future pedagogues. What does this kind of training focus on? That Renilde Montessori said to me one time it's not a pedagogic for this or this or this children. It's a pedagogic for each child. We can help each child. But sure the adults they have forgotten that they were children. Adults do not remember how they have learned how they could learn. And so the adults make a program for the children and the adults want that children gets an education that we have later adults what we need for business companies and so first Montessori had children different age then she saw that children love to do different material that do not ask is this material for older or younger that took material and so she observed children need material for the hands and then they can do something they can discover and so they learn mathematics by themselves with the material. But we adults do not understand this because we do not understand the nature the natural gifts from the children each child has the right to learn but not each child is able to learn today the same as the other 20 children because they have different interests and so this idea that they have to learn the same each day we have to break up. I think we have established that this professional work has very high stakes and can do really wonders but these people are under a lot of pressure so Victoria I would like you to tell us about the current situation that you experience and the things you think should be changed or adapted to improve the situation. So the worker situation is not easy especially in Hungary I think both sector of the early childhood education and care so it's true for the crash workers and the kindergarten workers but I think now the kindergarten workers situation is much more worse than the crash workers because of the legislation change and so on. The workers under the pressure from the government from the municipalities from the parents via the trade union we made a lot of work to ensure better life for the workers and for the members and we make a lot of researches. Child care work not only the mental work there is a hard physical work lifting the children for example a child care workers lifting a day more than 1200 kilos. Everybody who has cared for small children knows that it's hard physical labor but it's 10 to 12 infants or toddlers for the pedagogues at the crash so that's as you calculated the weight of a small car every day which is quite significant. Is there a good solution an example for a good solution that you can mention that can immediately alleviate this? Immediately I think it's never no immediate solution. Yeah but I'm a consumer so I want things fast. Yeah so we have some initiatives to modify the crash institution building requirement for example in the bathroom and the children group to ensure the ergonomical safety for the workers and it will be successful so the new standard will be published beginning of November so I hope the new crash is what will be built in the future it will be more ergonomical friendly for example which is an important steps for the workers. We as a trade union try to to base the training course for the workers especially to learn that how can they move and lifting the children how can they save their body and which is the good position to prevent the musculoskeletal disorders. Originally 10 years ago we wanted to early retirement for the childcare workers but the Hungarian government cancelled this possibility. The retirement age will be higher and higher year by year in the European level. I think it's problem everywhere in the Europe but nobody recognizes it and nobody speaks about it because the parents just think about the nannies in the childcare institution only playing with the children and it's a very nice job but it's a very hard job. This is why it would be very important to have opportunities to connect children and educators. This is for example where we usually teach restorative approaches to educators like how can we how can we create a structure where dialogue is possible instead of just a one-way communication because this is what really fosters you know partnership and empathy understanding each other's viewpoints. And you specifically facilitate these restorative discussions and you are a mediator can you tell us about a couple of examples. We are just finishing a three-year European project where we introduced collaborative pedagogical reflective methods in kindergarten and schools in four countries. The power of that was that teachers or educators could decide what method suits their reflection best. We were considering the perspectives of the involved people. How might the parents see or feel about the situation? What do they think? Just starting with checking circles choose an image card that suits your feeling about for example your child entering kindergarten. So parents were like wow our opinions matter we talk about feelings this is interesting I'm scared but oh there are cards let's see cards were the mediators of the feelings and thoughts and so what parents reported is that they were relieved that they could talk about how scary it was for them that their child is starting a new stage of life how they were unsure how this will work out. Some of them were tearful that the teacher was interested and the teacher started to share own stories which was like finally because this is something that happens really rarely because teachers are expected to be professionals leave feelings behind but we are human people human beings working with human beings and when the teacher shared their experience about own parental experience where when their children entered kindergarten parents felt such a connection to to that person. Yeah it really humanizes the pedagogue because the pedagogue traditionally is conceived you know just like two three hundred years old three thousand years old notion of the authority who towers above you whereas especially around these small children although I would argue also for way older people too this is a personal connection so in order to be able to develop and learn and and really find your place I I would probably think that these personal connections are very important. Yeah some of the teachers used to complain that nobody reflects on the information that they give and when they realized they could reduce the information to one pager bring the papers to the the teacher parent meetings leave three to five minutes for the parents to read it have a Q&A session and then a discussion and then playing games and then coming out with the little cards that's when the connection started and better corporations began between teachers and parents. I got a bit emotional because I always remind I'm probably the luckiest person ever to have had these experiences but I did literally cry on the shoulder of the nursery pedagogue of my kid when I was going through a hard time and she was like really telling me like it's an okay job that you're doing is like really that's a category but I have to be mindful that not everybody has such a great experience and we have already mentioned some of these cases when somebody comes with a specific difficulty or a different background to the majority of the children there are very individual needs as Maria has mentioned but there are also structural ones so I would like to go back for a minute to Victoria now because I know that you have contributed to an integration plan for refugee children in early childhood education a very pressing issue right now in Europe. A lot of Ukrainian refugees going everywhere in EU and with small children and it was a problem what can solve them and we try to collect firstly the information about to make a kind of map the reaction of the countries and we saw that it's not a reaction is not equal and the European Commission which I to the education and care working group wanted to help and try to help to the member states and we collect the good practices from different countries to get an inclusive early childhood education and care for these children and refugee children come from all over the place right now. Yes it's true and it was a huge problem for example in Germany because in Hungary only a transit country but a lot of migrants went or refugees went to in Germany the biggest problem the language barrier usually because we compare the education level of the for example the Ukrainian early childhood education care workers and we saw that it's it's absolutely same than for example in Hungary so those kind of women who is went abroad from Ukraine they has a possibility to work and the member states can adopt their graduation. I mentioned only the Ukrainian it this was the reason because we have a special focus for this problem and a group. I just want to add that I will be very interested to see how these professionals working not just with Ukrainian children across Europe but introducing themselves as people of a refugee status in a different cultural background how that will affect the children that they care for who don't necessarily share this. I would think initially that for my kid in a kindergarten to have an experience with someone speaking in other mother tongue that would be a very enriching experience but then it comes to this very contentious and very bitter question. Do you see an opportunity for some kind of positive effect of this push for integrating refugee children for the integration of minorities? This is what we are striving for so when Ukrainian war started we also saw a change in donor policy focusing on refugees supporting refugees when we approached donors or they approached us we always stated that we would like to support disadvantaged groups and this may mean refugees coming from the Ukraine or from elsewhere in the world and disadvantaged population who are working mostly with Roma communities and it took some time for donors to pick up on that. Now we have a huge program running called Child is First and we are supporting communities where there are refugee families and where there are disadvantaged Roma families and communities and there's a huge overlap let's be honest. Well there there there is some overlap yeah absolutely. Of course in the rates of mobility and who can actually leave a country there are big differences but when we are talking about refugees and people affected by active warfare in Roma communities there is a huge overlap there. And now a word from our partners. We owe a big thank you to the library of the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary for hosting our show today. The CEU library boasts the region's largest collection of English language materials in the field of social sciences and the humanities at both campuses in Vienna and Budapest its welcoming place for all learners. In Vienna their campus houses around 40 000 books and various study posts. Beside books they also offer media creation copying and scanning facilities and in Budapest a massive collection of about 135 000 books awaits you. I would like to come back to Maria how would you like to work together with the parents on a positive relationship when it comes to when it comes to any kind of hardship what is your ideal for a relationship with the parents? Okay the very very first is we have to have in mind when the parents bring the child to us to the teacher they trust us and the parents need help so that means I never can say some bits about the child it would hurt the parents can we find good things and then when we talk about the good things I like to talk to the parents every day when they pick up the child we can say a few nice words your child was very happy today with with writing the letters or I can also say hmm today we had a hard day to write letters today your child did not have fun with writing letters I do not know why and what is important for me that in the beginning we have the parent evening and we come together and we show the parents what we do so that they can understand the child and then that sure they always can come they can talk to us and they also can say my child has said something I do not understand but we never criticize parents because they want to do the best and they won't help from us. If you can have just one wish that comes through tomorrow as of tomorrow to implement something in early childhood education any kind of change that you would want to see that you would think is positive what would that one wish be Maria each child want to write when the child is four and a half three and a half to four and a half this is the natural wish of the child and what do the adults say it comes later when you go to school later when the child comes to school with five or six or seven is not interested in writing because the time to have the wish to write is totally over then the child has the wish to read I come to school I'm big I want to read but how can I read when I do not have the letters and so we miss one big wish to write and we cannot fulfill the next big wish because I did not get the letters early enough we never can say this comes later when the child wants to know something help the child that the child can learn it so one thing you can change as of tomorrow what would that be for you flora recognition professional autonomy and support tailor to educators needs okay these three things but I very much respect how you like you know put your foot through the door victoria what would your one single wish to be and there's okay let's acknowledge we need many things but let's let's just name one thing that you would be so happy to have as of tomorrow free available good quality child care prices for all children I can get on board with that thank you ladies this has been a truly enjoyable conversation this program is presented by eurozine your portal for insightful reads from over a hundred partner publications across numerous european languages to support our work and enjoy exclusive benefits from as little as three euros a month visit patreon.com slash eurozine this talk show is a display europe production a new content sharing platform that respects your user data the venue for this episode is kindly provided by the library of the central european university this program is co-founded by the european cultural foundation and the creative europe program of the european union please note that the views expressed here are solely those of the authors and speakers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the european union or the european education and cultural executive agency although i think they should take advice from us