Greetings From Marcy Whitebook, CSCCE Founder and Director Emerita |
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Marcy Whitebook (far left) with fellow teachers and parents who created “Who Cares for the Children?” — a 1979 slideshow about child care in the United States used by teacher groups and in classes around the country.
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How did we come to have our present-day early care and education system? How do inequities echo through time in the ECE system? How have people built collective power to demand a just system? In the 1970s, my fellow teachers and I were asking these questions as we created the compensation movement, just as many teachers, providers, and parents are asking these questions today.
ECHOES (Early Childhood History Organizing Ethos and Strategy) is a new interactive feature of the CSCCE website designed to provide an accessible way to explore these critical questions today. Discover a treasure trove of historical materials. Explore and engage with a timeline, stories, papers, audio and video clips, and contemporary material. ECHOES is meant to be mined over time. Browse the sections highlighted below and bookmark pages for the future.
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How Did We Come to Have Our Present-Day ECE System? |
Children and Teachers of the West Oakland Free Kindergarten Class,1894. Oakland Public Library, African American Museum and Library. |
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Click on the Critical Junctures timeline to examine six eras (from 1870 to the present) that continue to shape our ECE system. Read the report Kindergarten Lessons We Never Learned to understand how kindergarten for five-year-olds in public schools influenced the evolution of early care and education for younger children and continues to impact it today.
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How Do Inequities Echo Through Time in the ECE System? |
Worthy Wage Day 1992, Greensboro, North Carolina. |
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Using photos, quotes, and more, Enduring Inequities spotlights how poor pay and conditions, insufficient and unstable funding, racial disparities and prioritization of education over child care are fundamental elements of ECE in the United States across time, fueling injustice in the past and the present.
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How Have People Built Collective Power to Demand a Just ECE System? |
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Attendees at the first Montana Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs (MFCWC) Annual Convention, which took place in Butte, Montana on August 3, 1921. Courtesy of the Montana Historical Society. |
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Discover stories of early care and education activists who have worked throughout centuries to secure rights and ensure dignity for educators, children, and families participating in the ECE system. For example, Black women, who organized in Black Women's Clubs, expanded kindergartens and day nurseries for Black children and created training opportunities for Black teachers.
Learn about the four main strategies early educators used in the Compensation Movement of the 1970s, which culminated in the nationwide grassroots Worthy Wage Campaign of the 1990s. Enjoy songs, stories, cartoons, and more developed by teachers and providers in the movement.
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ECHOES reflects the contributions of many people and most especially my fellow ECHOES team members, Claudia Alvarenga, Peggy Haack, Silvia Muñoz, Rosemarie Vardell, Rachel E. Williams, and Barbara Zheutlin, and designer Ben Kuehn who helped to bring our vision to the screen. We are very grateful to the Heising-Simons Foundation, whose funding made this project possible.
ECHOES is an evergreen project—we will continue to update the site and include additional resources and still untold histories over time. Stay tuned for information about webinars on using ECHOES in the coming months. We welcome feedback and suggestions for material to include at [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you about the site.
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Center for the Study of Child Care Employment
University of California, Berkeley
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