ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how early childhood education was dealt with within UNESCO during the Cold War. It argues that the different phases of the Cold War had a direct influence on when and how early childhood education emerged on the agency’s agenda. In the 1950s, early childhood education was a controversial topic, as it was caught in the Cold War divide. In the context of the Détente, it turned out to be a field favorable to dialogue and cooperation between both sides within the framework of the “convergence” of “industrialized societies”, with the result that developing countries felt left aside. During the 1970s, UNESCO’s policy on early childhood education was thus reoriented to promote local solutions commensurate with the cultural background and the financial constraints of the developing countries. However, most of those initiatives did not survive the “structural adjustments” policies of the 1980s. On the whole, UNESCO’s interest in early childhood education only grew slowly over the decades. Other international or non-governmental organizations (OMEP, IBE, UNICEF) often took the initiative first. UNESCO’s early childhood policies have gradually been developed again since the 1990s, supporting the growth of early childhood education in urbanized societies throughout the world.
