Learning the rules of the game, of your environment, and navigating when those rules need to be followed and when they might need to be challenged is a core part of our life experiences. At nursery, at school, at work, in our communities. We learn the rules, and we know the consequences of breaking them. The news is full of politicians who have broken the rules. Not, it has to be said, in a Dalai Lama-inspired ‘know the rules so well you can break them effectively’ kind of way.
When it comes to early years, we’re the ones introducing children to what is often the first set of rules outside their home. For some children, that might be the first set of rules they’ve ever encountered. Our best educators will really engage the children in crafting the rules, in working out what they should be, and most importantly in understanding the why. Why each rule exists. I'm always struck by how many similar principles effective leadership and effective pedagogy have in common. In both leadership of our teams and in our pedagogical approach with the children, we’re at our best when we start with the why.
As we bake an understanding of rules into our curriculum and our approach, an insightful area to consider is what relationship we want our children to have with the rules. Are we looking for children who always comply or are we looking for creative thinkers? Can we have both? As we see parenting trends shift and more parents taking a collaborative approach to rule setting, is this changing the dynamic? I don't want to see compliance without creative challenging. Or at the other end of the spectrum to see total freedom without a framework. Seeing educators work with children to develop their creative thinking, supporting them to question why, to test the boundaries, yet also developing respect for those rules and empathy for others is a special thing to witness. We see that same special skill in the leaders whose work we are most inspired by. The ones whose teams understand the ground rules, are bought into them, help to set them, and who play by the rules because they want to be successful, not for fear of the consequences. The teams who do what's right, but who also question, and find new ways of working.
I can't imagine what the future will look like for the children in our settings, but one thing is for sure: they will need to be able to both follow the rules and question them.