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to help others. The development of motivation and will is a new challenge in early
education, when electronic media focus on other aspects of learning.
Different types of learning are not direct opposites, but rather construct knowledge
from different perspectives. The perspective of traditional narrative learning is holistic
and syncretistic while school learning aims at analytical knowledge. Jerome Bruner
(1986, 1990,1996) claimed that these ways of knowing couldn’t replace each other. The
dilemma of early education is how to sustain and support children’s syncretistic und-
erstanding, which is the basic condition for all creativity.
Conclusion
Summing up, it is possible to claim that investment in early education is the most
profitable thing any country can do. Even cognitively oriented compensatory programs
result in remarkable economic effects in long term follow-up studies. But we can update
the concept of “high quality service” and focus on broader developmental potential in
early childhood. Early intervention programs introduced analytic thinking and school
learning to early years in the form of basic skills training and did not take seriously
the developmental potential of narrative learning and play. The invasion of virtual
media and gaming has changed the possibilities of developing narrative learning. We
can agree with the conclusion of a recent OECD comparative study that high quality
early education is a vital basis for life long learning (OECD, 2006). But high quality is
not possible without narrative learning.
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Bruner, J. (1996). The culture of education. Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press.
Dewey, J. (1910/1933). How we think. Boston: Henry Holt. (Original work published
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Donaldson, M. (1993). Human minds. London: allen Lane The Penguin Press.
Egan, k. (1987). Teaching a story­telling. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Pentti Hakkarainen