The Daycare Myth: What We Get Wrong About Early Care & Education

by Emily Tate Sullivan 

November 5, 2024 – In the United States, young children attend programs that most refer to “daycares” or “child cares,” staffed by people that many think of as “workers.” That has to change, argues author Dan Wuori in his new book, “The Daycare Myth: What We Get Wrong About Early Care and Education (and What We Should Do About It).” “We ought to eliminate those terms from our lexicon and, instead, think of those programs as schools and the adults employed there as teachers,” Wuori writes. Those are two totally free and “simple changes” he proposes to the field. An even bigger change the field requires? “Significant, transformative public investment,” he writes. Wuori’s arguments throughout the concise, 101-page book are premised on what he calls “The Three Simple Truths of Early Development”:

1. Learning begins in utero and never stops.
2. The period from prenatal to age 3 is a uniquely consequential window of human
   development during which the fundamental architecture of the brain is “wired.”
3. Optimal brain development is dependent on stable, nurturing relationships with highly
   engaged adults.
   

EdSurge recently had a chance to speak with Wuori, a longtime early childhood policy expert and former kindergarten teacher and school district administrator. In this conversation, the author proposes “a new way forward” in which children’s early years are regarded as sacred, families are supported and given options, and early childhood educators are compensated in a way that reflects the true value of their work. Click here for selected excerpts from that conversation.