 The young students at The UWI-Children’s Centre are never given connect-the-dot sheets, the art exercise where you make shapes by drawing lines from dot to dot – clouds, fish, flowers or puppies. It seems a harmless enough exercise, but the risk of following the dots is that you stop following your own creativity. Spend enough of your life connecting dots and you may even forfeit your capacity for critical thought, for innovative thought. Such dire consequences for so simple an exercise, it drives home just how vital is the education of our children, vital for the child and vital for the society.
“There are no rules for art,” says Dr. Carol Logie at her office. Through her window we can see the Children’s Centre, an institution very much part of her own creative vision for early childhood care and education. The pre-schoolers under her charge could want no better ambassador for the power of pioneering creativity. As a member of The UWI she has built, without blueprint, a centre for children, families, educators and advocates that has the potential to change Caribbean society – children first.
Dr. Logie is an academic researcher and author, known internationally in the field of early education, and is the Administrative Director and one of the founders (the other being distinguished academic and educator Dr. Edrick Gift) of the UWI Family Development and Children’s Research Centre (UWI-FDCRC). UWI-FDCRC began in 1988 as a laboratory pre-school of the UWI Faculty of Education.
Nearly 30 years on, and an integral part of the Faculty of Humanities and Education, School of Education Department, it has grown from a small school of 50 young children to include the Children’s Centre, which is a site for innovation in teaching and curricula development as well as for teacher training; and the Family Development Centre (UWI-FDC), a hub for data collection, research, training, counseling and advocacy. Almost as remarkable as FDCRC’s growth and the scope of its ambition is how groundbreaking was its initial conception. Thirty years ago, the landscape for early childhood education was barren.
“When we started there were no early childhood programmes at the tertiary level in Trinidad and Tobago,” says Dr. Logie. “Early education programmes in Trinidad and Tobago started at The University of the West Indies. The School of Education (then Faculty of Education) offered the first bachelors’ degree in Early Education. The first person awarded a doctorate in early education at a regional tertiary institution was my student.”
Dr. Logie is very much the driving force behind FDCRC. A Senior Lecturer with UWI, she is also Chair of the Foundation for the Development of Caribbean Children, former Chair of the T&T National Council for Early Childhood Care and Education and a member of National Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Gender, Youth and Child Development. Dr. Logie, as part of The UWI, has been one of the region’s most persistent advocates and policy influencers for children. In 2013 she won The UWI Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence for Service to the University Community and Public Service.
“I just enjoy children,” she smiles. “But I like giving them back to their parents at the end of the day!”
She says, “There is something about the purity of giving information. There is something about valuing how children see the world and what they say. Their worldview is important to me.”
Last year her work was recognised by the World Forum for Early Childhood Care and Education, through its Exchange Leadership Initiative (ELI), an international programme to find and connect leaders in the field. Dr. Logie was recognised as an “Exceptional Master Leader” in making a difference for children, families and community.
“It is quite an honour to be acknowledged by one’s peers around the world,” she says. “It means now that those of us who have been selected have a lot of work to do.”
The ELI leaders will address issues affecting young children across the globe, including refugees and those living in extreme poverty and adverse conditions.
“We will be finding ways to help caregivers and teachers improve the lives of children. We see ourselves not only as teachers but as community leaders who can help others,” she adds.
Leadership is one of Dr. Logie’s consistent themes. Her view of teacher and caregiver is someone who looks beyond the act of teaching to one who sees themselves as a leader in the community tasked with the nurturing of the community’s greatest asset, its children. In her view, a leader is an advocate. A leader is not bound by old methods but innovates to meet the time.
“Education is about change as well,” she says. “We have to be able to not stay within the box we have or say that what worked for the last generation would even work for this generation.”
The eldest of four children to a father who was one of the first Afro-Trinidadians to hold a senior position in a multinational energy company, by inclination and circumstance, Dr. Logie found her inner leader from a very young age.
It was as a young woman, while studying in Spain, that she became a teacher. At first it was only to earn a living, her ambition was to join the diplomatic corp. “But education happened,” she says. As strong as she was, she had a soft spot for children. More importantly, she was given the opportunity to work with some truly top-level teachers at a school for the children of the Spanish elite. She saw the potential – in the children, in teaching and in the field of early childhood education.
“I decided to blend it all,” she says of her big picture interests in society (her first degree was in Politics) with teaching, education innovation and advocacy. FDCRC is very much the result of her own journey in personal leadership. One of the newest and exciting aspects of the FDCRC is The UWI-FDC, a self-financing project funded by donor contributions, our Ministry of Education and regional partners. Established in 2013, the FDC has already become a centre for research, information and advocacy for early childhood care and education. The centre recently launched its research agenda with the publication of “Childrearing Practices in the Caribbean”, a book based in part on the findings of a national survey in Trinidad and Tobago spearheaded by the FDC.
The centre is supported by five adjunct professors from institutions such as Syracuse University, Pennsylvania State University and the University of Cambridge, who assist in research, publications and training. The FDC also provides counseling services for parents and children, a social worker, referral services to caregivers in need of support, and is at present working on a resource manual for parents.
The FDC has also created the Caribbean Research Empowerment Network (CREN) website (thecren.com), the first virtual community of educators and administrators in the child development field.
But what is the end goal? We want children to be happy and healthy, well-adjusted members of society that are able to make a positive contribution when they reach maturity. Even with all this work and information, how do we achieve that?
Dr. Logie says, “education is more than academic learning. I see it as an intellectual undertaking. It is not about the rigid instruction of children. At FDCRC we encourage the development of values, citizenship, and intellectual curiosity. An educated person understands life around them and the best ways to make life happen for them.”
In other words, teaching children to think beyond the dots.
Contact FDCRC at:
The UWI Children’s Centre
#32 St. John’s Road St. Augustine,
Trinidad and Tobago, W.I.
Telephone: (868) 662-2665
Email: uwi.fdcrc@sta.uwi.edu
The UWI Family Development Centre
#32 St. John’s Road St. Augustine,
Trinidad and Tobago, W.I.
Telephone: (868) 662-2002 ext. 84512/10
Email: fdp.uwi@sta.uwi.edu
Facebook page: The UWI-Family Development Centre
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