From schoolification of children to schoolification of parents? – educational policies in COVID times

Abstract

This article analyses the impact on Early Years Education policy of the crisis provoked by COVID 19 pandemia and raises some questions about the future. For a better understanding of this impact COVID 19, I present the construction of this educational level since the nineteenth century contrasting two essential models – the educational assistance model and the pedagogical educational model. A current trend in Early Years educational policy has been the early adoption for this educational level of the conventional schooling standard, based on the transmissive mode. This means the extension to early childhood education of the mainstream transmissive pedagogy already current in primary and secondary education, thus tending to transform early childhood education into a prequel to primary schooling. This mainstream conventional mode was confronted with the present pandemic crisis due to Covid 19 virus. I will analyse some aspects of the educational impact of this pandemic crisis since the lockdown period to the reopening of early childhood centres.