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More Is Caught Than Taught: A guide to quality child care (MCTT) is a holistic approach for increasing the quality of care and developmental experiences provided to children, especially poor and minority children. MCTT addresses the need to engage the latent energies of parents, teachers, administrators, and community members and seeks to focus this energy on the challenge of acquiring more knowledge, mastering skills, and assuming greater responsibility for the care, protection and development of young children. The basic principle of MCTT is that children learn through experience and observation. We all know the saying "Do what I say, not what I do," but we also know this doesn't work in reality. Children listen to adults, they watch adults, and they form their identities in large part based on what is happening around them.

The home, child care center, and community are all important "schools" where children learn. MCTT helps participants identify and assume our role as teachers in these "schools." It assists us in developing a vision for what we want our children to learn, for what kind of children we want to grow. And it mobilizes us to create the best possible climate, offer the best pos­sible curriculum, and present the ideal role models for the early childhood years of our children.

More Is Caught Than Taught was developed for and with individuals who are parents, caregivers and community leaders expressly concerned with the care and devel­opment of young children. However, the rationale, strategies, approaches and tools of MCTT evolved over many years as FOCAL worked with a broad variety of groups and organizations throughout the nation. At the most fundamental level, it is accurate to say that the principles and philosophy of MCTT came first and that the Guide was the result of applying those principles and philosophy to child development. The Guide is organized around the following eight activity modules.

The first is Getting Started, which introduce staff, parents, and community leaders to MCTT and help them gain a full understanding or the program; to encourage people to commit to participate in the program; to map out a plan for the program are the center. Vision, is the second module which is the spiritual core of the MCTT program. It also generates a tangible listing of our goals for children that, during the rest of the program, we will be working to meet.  

Following is the Environment module and is a part of the pro­gram where we look at the physical and spiritual surroundings in which we live, work, and play, and we think about how these surroundings affect us and our children. Perhaps the most challenging aspect is the Internalized Oppression module.

Here, we become aware of racial and other roles we have been taught and have "caught" and become aware of dys­functional feelings and behaviors shaped by these roles. Having worked to bring class, race, age, and other cultural diversity to the program, the How to BE Together module encour­ages program participants to identify and establish a basic con­tract or set of "rules" for being and working together based on the principles of Internalized Oppression theory.

The Early Childhood Theory module directs participants to identify and examine our own early childhood theories and to become familiar with prevailing theories of early childhood development and to develop a philosophy that integrates elements we like from various theories.

The objective of the Curriculum, Lesson Planning, and Assessment module is to examine our current curriculum in light of early childhood theories and our particular vision for children. Our final result is a curriculum that is free from negative "caught" mes­sages. Instead, it affirms our children and the type of learning which will help them grow to be strong, healthy, and happy leaders of tomorrow's world.

The final module, Work Planning, will help participants gain increased familiarity with the tools and techniques for appropriate planning and to develop a comprehensive work plan for the rest of the MCTT process based on priorities identified during the first seven modules.

More Is Caught Than Taught is a rigorous program that invites parents, child care providers and community leaders to become the targets of change as well as the facilitators of change in the care and development of our children. MCTT, affirms the fact that the care and development of our chil­dren is the single most important undertaking any community can address and that nothing short of our very best effort is acceptable.