Career and life experience tells us that one of the key factors that determine the success or failure of a career is whether a person, an institution, a country or a nation is correct. Of course, "positioning" is not a static concept. We must keep pace with the times and pursue adjustment with a keen and wise heart. The influence of "positioning" deviation or error is directional, fundamental and long-term, and its negative influence cannot be recovered by tactical measures of tinkering. The so-called "efficiency means doing things right, and effectiveness means doing things right". I want to look at the current situation of our early childhood education from the following "positioning" angles.

Kindergarten: Profit Organization or Warm Home? Singapore's early childhood education has not been included in the national formal education system, and commercial organizations, including basic operators, are operating in the business model of private for-profit organizations. This model seems to be taken for granted in an environment where business is developed and the spirit of independent survival is advocated. However, it is this macro-environment that brings an insurmountable challenge-putting profit first and maximizing shareholders' interests as the highest goal. How to balance the unique and important social responsibilities and build the kindergarten into a child-centered home, so that all teachers, managers, auxiliary staff and parents feel warm? It may be easier to say politically correct words, but it is not so simple to put them into practice in daily work. For management, should we reduce costs, improve efficiency and put customers first, or should we focus on more people-oriented policies, for example, if preschool teachers are not required to enjoy special preferential treatment, teachers should pay more attention to it. Is the teacher-student ratio optimal? Do teachers have sufficient resources, professional training and career planning to perform their duties? Does the management pay due attention to teachers' emotional management and stress management and take corresponding measures? When the principals and teachers face unreasonable accusations, does the management dare to stick to principles, stand firm and defend their (or their) legitimate rights and interests reasonably and forcefully?

Teacher: A stable job or a noble career? Being kind to kindergarten employees, especially teachers, is an important foundation and prerequisite for creating a warm and harmonious atmosphere for young children. But I have never used this as an unprincipled excuse for individual teachers to be perfunctory, muddled, enterprising, or even dereliction of duty and abuse of power. On the contrary, in my opinion, preschool teachers are a very special, important and noble cause, because their work is related to the healthy and happy growth of every baby, the happiness and hope of every family and the future of the country. Think about it carefully. If every kindergarten teacher can truly realize his sacred duty and be proud of it, instead of treating it as an ordinary paid job or a relatively stable rice bowl, how can there be shocking child abuse incidents? Bing Xin, a famous writer, wrote a passage that vividly depicts the responsibility of preschool teachers. "Love is on the left, responsibility is on the right, walk on both sides of the road of life, sow seeds at any time, blossom at any time, and decorate this road with flowers for a long time, so that students who wear branches and brush leaves can feel happy without pain." Because of responsibility, love is no longer biased, indulgent and cold; Based on responsibility, let us use rational love instead of doting and favoritism, let us use love to support a bright sky for children, let us warm their hearts with love, and let us light up their dreams with love!

Parents: paying customers or educational partners? Singapore is an international metropolis with developed commerce. The powerful influence of business culture is everywhere. On the positive side, the culture of "profit first" promotes people to give full play to their enthusiasm, initiative and creativity, and promotes economic growth and prosperity. However, its negative impact should not be underestimated. If we go to extremes, it will produce absurd and incredible phenomena. As far as preschool education is concerned, I'm afraid we have to admit a general psychology of parents. Since I paid the money and gave you the business, as a customer, I have every right to deal with you. The common principle in business circles is that "the customer is God" and "the customer is always right". Under the guidance of this rule, it is a common phenomenon: parents often blame and complain, while teachers often get blamed and retreat. Its essence is that parents simply position themselves as paying customers and consciously or unconsciously give up most or even all of their responsibilities as pre-school education partners. From the perspective of pedagogy, family is one of the main places for children to grow up, which is very important for children's healthy growth and personality edification. Parents should take the cultivation of sound personality as the center of family education, and strive to quit the behaviors that will have a bad influence on children, such as doting or authoritarian parenting methods, and attach importance to intellectual development and ignore emotional counseling, because that will often lead to children's lack of sympathy, self-esteem, self-confidence and emotional indifference.

On the other hand, parents generally pay more attention to their intentional educational behavior and ignore their words and deeds in daily life situations, which has a subtle influence on their children. In fact, children always understand and recognize social norms by observing the behavior of adults in similar moral situations, and further internalize them into their own codes of conduct through imitation. Parents' inconsistent words and deeds and lack of consistent educational attitudes and methods will not only confuse children's understanding of the rules, but also mislead children to acquire some bad behavior habits. What kind of person the future children will become is closely related to what kind of parents they are. Plant trees for ten years and educate people for a hundred years. Education is not only a science, but also an art. Liu Zongyuan, a great poet in the Tang Dynasty, believes that the growth of all things in the world has its own development law, which is "formed by the wood". We must conform to the laws of nature, otherwise it will not only be futile, but also cause damage. Educating people, like planting trees, should conform to the law of human development and should not be arbitrary with subjective wishes and emotions.

Recently, the Ministry of Education has made a series of plans for preschool education in Singapore, which not only developed pilot kindergartens, but also standardized the teaching methods and modes of kindergartens. At the same time, we will organize training activities for principals, lecturers and kindergarten teachers in stages, hoping that educators can provide children with teaching methods and educational contents that are in line with their physical and mental development, and also hope that children in Singapore can acquire knowledge and learn through interesting activities. Although the Ministry of Education has standardized the teaching principles of kindergartens, especially advocating "entertaining", on the whole, there are still many problems in the organization of teaching activities in many kindergartens. Let's briefly talk about one or two of them.

The first is the teaching content. Now many kindergartens still define Chinese teaching as "learning to write Chinese characters". Because Singapore kindergartens implement bilingual education, children of Chinese families must learn Chinese. What is the goal of Chinese teaching? It should be "listening, speaking, reading and writing", but as far as preschool children are concerned, "listening and speaking" is particularly important, followed by "reading" and even less "writing". The reason is that our educational goals should conform to the law of children's development. Children aged 0-6 are in a critical period of language development. They should learn to listen, speak and understand the meaning of words under the guidance of adults, master the expression and understanding ability of Chinese at this age, and lay a good foundation for future Chinese learning.

At this time, the child's body is still growing and developing, and the flexibility of the child's hand muscles and fingers is not perfect. If there is too much writing in Chinese teaching at this time, it will bring psychological burden to children, and heavy writing will take up children's time to learn idioms and be active in body and mind, which can be said to stifle their growth. Of course, the content of preschool education cannot be interpreted only by language teaching. What children need to know can be said to cover everything in the universe, especially their own living environment. Therefore, we should not let children spend more time in that "box".

Secondly, it is the problem of educational methods and activity design. Preschool children are characterized by "curiosity, curiosity, activity and imitation" and like "singing, dancing and making". Organizing activities according to their characteristics will undoubtedly create "novelty and magic" to stimulate their interest in learning. Only driven by "interests" can their initiative be brought into play. Therefore, we should follow the law of children's physical and mental development, carefully design teaching activities, create "problems" and "novelty" for children, let them explore, discover, solve, judge and test, and give full play to their active participation.

What needs to be mentioned here is that we should give full play to the nature of children's artistic performance and change the phenomenon that children are only allowed to do half a long rhythm (sitting on the ground and swinging their arms). When teaching children's songs, tongue twisters, ditties, etc., we should give them some simple and vivid actions so that children can say and do. These vivid movements will also become symbols to remind them to remember and let them dance. When we use teaching methods, we should be flexible and organize activities alternately, so as to truly "entertain and educate", endow children with "the nature of play" and let them acquire "knowledge" through happy "playing and doing". Edward Lee Thorndike, a famous American educational psychologist, once put forward three learning laws, among which the "law of effect" holds that happy results strengthen the connection, while boring results weaken the connection. If teachers put educational content into the game according to the characteristics of children's activities and let children operate and move, they will get satisfactory "effects". For preschool educators, the content of preschool education is complex and the educational skills need to be comprehensive. Doing this job well is undoubtedly a great challenge. However, aren't we also creating the future? If each of our teachers devote themselves to research and provide children with more modern educational methods and contents, will our children enjoy a happy childhood? At the same time, aren't we also harvesting?