Childhood Education: Critical To Achieving Sustainable Development Goal

Abstract

The early years of the child lays the foundation for solid or weak development. Much of the first two years of life are spent in the creation of a child's first "sense of self" or the building of a first identity. This is a crucial part of children's makeup—how they first see themselves, how they think they should function, how they expect others to function in relation to them. For this reason, early care ensures that in addition to employing carefully selected and trained caretakers, program policy emphasise links with family, home culture and home language. Regrettably, the Nigerian child suffers deprivation from lack of good social services in terms of poor nutrition, health care and access to safe water and sanitation, general protection from environmental hazards and insecurity. All of these gave justification for the formulation of National Policy for Integrated Early Childhood Development in Nigeria (IECD), which was officially launched in October 2007. There is serious neglect of early childhood education programme and invariably might hinder achieving the 2030 global agenda of sustainable development. This paper therefore called for an overhaul of childhood education so as to facilitate the realization of the sustainable goals. Keywords: SDG, Education, Child care, Development and Childhood.