Early childhood in the Caribbean - Bernard van Leer Foundation

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Atkinson has a public health clinic and one
state-run and one private primary school.
Children go to a nearby secondary school. There
is one pre-school but the fees are too high for
most people unless they have support.
Atkinson has a clean environment and the
houses are well-equipped, although electricity
and other utilities are sometimes cut off for
non-payment. Most local residents are related
and find Atkinson a friendly and secure place
whose few problems, they say, are caused by
outsiders.
Methodology
We began by examining the national and
community contexts for early childhood in the
four areas, and investigating their beliefs and
practices about children and their development.
We built up a profile of each community and
then carried out a ‘knowledge, attitudes, beliefs
and practices’ survey in each, with a sample of
50 families per community. We also specifically
surveyed at-risk families and children.
Next we sought information on children in
families. We got this by asking parents and others
what they do day-to-day with their children and
by observing them in action. We were especially
interested in adult–child communication and in
patterns of care, stimulation and discipline. The
effect of poverty on family strategies was a focus
of this part of the project.
All this work was done to a high ethical standard
by avoiding financial inducement, by explaining
what was being done, and by avoiding or
stopping activities that were intrusive. But the
researchers could not remain in the background
all the time and were sometimes inevitably
drawn in to the families they were observing.
We do not claim to have produced anything
more than a preliminary anthropology of
childcare in the communities we observed. But
as the research went on and people got used to
us, we were able to gather better information.
We made use of local ‘community advisers’,
one per community, to act as gatekeepers and
consultants.
This work with families was followed up by
structured focus groups with child development
professionals, and visits to pre-school centres and
children’s homes. These were followed in turn
by in-depth interviews with 26 professionals
in fields such as medicine, education and
social care and by structured observations
and interviews at 13 pre-schools and day care
centres. This third level of the research involved
a literature review and extensive dialogue
with academics involved in child development
and children’s rights in the Caribbean and
globally, and an analysis of state and other
documentation on children in both countries.
Value judgements
While social scientists now have a welcome
awareness of a wider range of cultures than in
the past, they have still tended to judge ‘other’
cultures against a Western standard.
In the Caribbean, cultures and practices
have been written off as ‘dysfunctional’ or