How Experts Are Reimagining Early Childhood for a Changing World

Most experts working in early childhood development agree: the first years of a child’s life shape not just their academic readiness, but also a child’s lifelong health, resilience, emotional well-being and brain development.

But Jack Shonkoff, a professor of child health and development at Harvard University, believes that researchers and policymakers need to expand those conversations in order to address disparities in early childhood.

“My plea is: Let's move beyond quickly on the fact that children are our future, and say what we are going to do about that,” said Shonkoff, who is also the director of Harvard’s FirstPlace Partners, an initiative that works with neighborhood leaders and other organizations to apply developmental science and improve outcomes for children, families, and communities. “We need new ideas, we need to be bold.”

Shonkoff spoke at a TIME100 Talks panel moderated by TIME executive editor Nikhil Kumar in New York City on Wednesday. The panel, which centered on reimagining early childhood in a changing world, also included Pia Rebello Britto, global director of education at UNICEF, and Rosemarie Truglio, senior vice president of global education at Sesame Workshop.

Britto said that UNICEF is trying to create “practical steps” to better the lives of children around the world and prevent perpetuating unequal circumstances. These steps include investing in children’s abilities to “eat, play, and love.”

“Eat: We are working to ensure adequate, right, appropriate nutrition. Play: Because it's all about that interaction with children, the stimulation that sparks the brain connections,” Britto said. And love, she continued, is “the foundation of it all.”

“That human trust, the protection,” she said. “We talk about children in humanitarian contexts. We talk about children being affected by war and by climate change. How do you nurture that love?”

Sesame Workshop, the global nonprofit educational organization behind the beloved childhood show Sesame Street, works especially in that “play” step, Truglio said, emphasizing the importance of opportunities for children to learn cognitive processing skills, self-regulation, and social empathy.

“Our mission is to help kids grow smarter, stronger, and kinder,” she said. She highlighted how important the last goal on that list is for building a better future full of kinder adults, adding: “Boy, do we need more perspective-taking and collaboration and truly listening and seeing the people in our lives and treating them with compassion and respect.”

Sesame Workshop attempts to teach children those lessons through media and with “joy and fun and happiness,” she said.

The panelists discussed the challenges in implementing more equitable programs for children at the local and government levels. One of these challenges is the “our children versus other people’s children” mentality, according to Shonkoff.

“I think that the problem is that there's too much focus on what's good for my children and who cares about other people’s children, whether it's in a country or around the world,” he said. “We all pay a price for that lack of finding common cause—that we all benefit from everyone in the world being healthier.”

Britto said that another challenge was trying to convince governments to invest in caring for children, and convincing them that both maternal and child health is a public sector issue, rather than just a nonprofit or private sector issue.

“The universal aspiration of every adult, which is wanting the best for their child … has not converted to a vote-getting issue,” Britto said. “It hasn't converted into a commercial incentive, and it hasn't converted into a way that a country can stand tall, or a nation or a district can stand tall and say, ‘We're doing this well.’”

One way to address this is to bring the community into conversations with policymakers, she said, while explaining that UNICEF is trying to bring teachers, parents, and caregivers to the forefront to understand what they need to care for children and give them what they need.

Sesame Workshop, Truglio said, is trying to do the same in order to create “blueprints” for caregivers of all kinds.

“Let's just not create content in a vacuum,” she said. “Go talk to the parents, talk to the teachers, talk to the administrators, and talk at the systems level because you could create all the content and it’s going to sit in a drawer. We want this to be practical and useful.”

These voices are going to be even more important, the experts said, as artificial intelligence and rapidly developing technologies change the way that children learn and that adults care for and educate children.

Shonkoff said that while AI will certainly change how childhood education occurs, certain needs like a child’s “social connection” will never change.

“Social connection, which is like hunger and thirst for humans, it's survival. That's not going to change no matter what happens with the digital world,” he said.

Early childhood educators may be able to apply AI—but with caution and specific purposes, Truglio said, adding that Sesame Workshop is exploring the “developmentally appropriate” uses for it.

“We have to increase the level of awareness and embrace it as a tool, but still hold sacred those fundamental cognitive early processing skills that children need, and that we just can't give onto a machine,” she said, adding: “That would be a huge mistake.”

TIME100 Talks: Starting Strong: Reimagining Early Childhood for a Changing World was presented by Reliance.