Quotes about passion, motivation, and wisdom from the professionals in the video segment entitled: The Passion for Early Childhood Education

“So I started to look at the research about how young children develop identity and attitudes, and in the course discovered that the preschool years are critical; they are the first, most fundamental period, when children are in fact noticing they are and are noticing the attitudes and the stereotypes and the discomforts or the positive messages about their skin color, their racial identity, their ethnic identity, and so on, and that teachers didn’t know what to do about that, and preschool being such a critical time, preschool teachers really had no idea, even, that young children were even interested in these areas.”                                                                                                                                                  -Louise Derman-Sparks (Professor Emeritus –Pacific Oak College, CA)

  
“I see early childhood education, all education really, as a civil rights issue. Because the right to what we think about in a relationship to a childhood that leads you—leaves you ready to optimum life experiences, a childhood and an educational context experience throughout your life cycle, that opens up the world to you, that gives you the tools that you need to ask questions and investigate things. Those are the things that I want for all children.”                                                                                      - Renatta M. Cooper (Program Specialist, Office of Child Care, LA County Chief Administrative Office)