From the Pages of Young Children: A Voice for the Profession and the Power of Play
In recognition and celebration of NAEYC’s upcoming hundredth anniversary, we are featuring a selection of articles from the Young Children archive, which is accessible to NAEYC members at NAEYC.org/resources/pubs/yc/archive. In this edition, we are featuring the work of Edgar Klugman, who passed away in early 2024. Dr. Klugman spent his life advocating for the early childhood education profession and play-based, trauma-informed learning. In the profile that follows, Jennifer Kashuck and Dolores Stegelin highlight major events in Dr. Klugman’s life and career. This includes his work with NAEYC and his founding of the Global Healing Curriculum Project at age 97.
“As I continue to grow, I am motivated and in search of guidance as to how to serve the highest good for all humanity.”
—Edgar Klugman
Edgar Klugman, who passed away in February 2024, spent a lifetime teaching, writing, and advocating for young children and the professionals who educate them. He was a fierce advocate for play-based learning and its role in helping children develop social and emotional skills as well as content knowledge. In his final years, he drew on his experiences as a Holocaust survivor to create a trauma-informed curriculum.
Dr. Klugman was born in 1925 and spent his early years in Nuremberg, Germany. At age 13, he fled the Nazis on one of the last Kindertransport missions. Kindertransport was the children’s transfer program organized by Great Britain, in which unaccompanied minors younger than 17 were allowed to enter that country from Germany and German-annexed territories (US Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.). The program ran from 1938 to 1940.
As a teenager, Dr. Klugman was reunited with his family in the United States. After graduating from high school, he served with the US Army in Italy and Austria. Once he returned to the United States, he studied elementary education and earned a doctorate from Columbia University in New York. He then joined the US Department of Education in Afghanistan, where he worked as a methods and materials specialist. Upon returning to the US, he served as teacher and principal at two New York elementary schools. Later in life, he joined the faculty of Wheelock College in Boston, Massachusetts, where he focused on early childhood education, policy, and play. He also helped to establish the Intergenerational Studies master’s degree program.
Dr. Klugman widely shared his expertise on early childhood education in a range of publications, including those of NAEYC. Writing in 1963 in The Journal of Nursery Education (the precursor to Young Children), Dr. Klugman outlined guidelines for selecting high-quality children’s literature. An excellent book, he wrote, “is a book with something genuinely important to say to the reader by means of ideas expressed in words and/or pictures.” Humor, precision, and authenticity were key parts of this mandate.
Some of the issues Dr. Klugman raised still resonate today. In a 1982 article for Young Children, he and his coauthor lamented the lack of respect afforded early childhood educators and advocated for greater recognition of the critical work they do. Specifically, the article highlighted
- The importance of early childhood education and the need for research to validate high-quality programs
- The dearth of salaries and benefits that are commensurate with early childhood educators’ expertise and work
- The lack of consistent, professional language used to describe these educators’ roles
Dr. Klugman was an active NAEYC member and served on the Governing Board. As part of the Play, Policy, and Practice Interest Forum, he was involved in organizing play symposia for NAEYC Affiliates around the country, which he wrote about. For example, Dr. Klugman worked closely with Walter Drew—founder and executive director of the Institute for Self Active Education and a past executive director of the Florida Association for the Education of Young Children—to implement several play gatherings and workshops. He contributed to Play, Policy, and Practice (NAEYC 2008), which shared information for educators about play and learning with guidance from the many play symposia he conducted for teachers, teacher educators, international play experts, and policymakers.
In 2020, at the age of 97 and after a career spanning eight decades, Dr. Klugman launched the Global Healing Curriculum, a holistic and interdisciplinary social and emotional curriculum designed to support and understand families from a trauma perspective, particularly intergenerational trauma (see “What Is Intergenerational Trauma?” below). This was directly informed by his personal experiences: “The idea to create a Global Healing Curriculum was inspired by my own lifelong journey of healing as a survivor of the Holocaust and a desire to leave the earth better than I found it,” he said. “My identity was taken away from me, and I am struggling now to reinvent it through Global Healing.”
Toward this end, Dr. Klugman gathered professors, community educators, child advocates, child development specialists, and early childhood leaders from across the United States and Brazil to develop community-based learning activities for adults and children. Many of these are play-based and involve storytelling, acting, and sharing memories. Some are meant to evoke communication, conflict resolution, relationship building, self-discovery, and empathy. Others teach gratitude, meditation, and ways to observe nature. These efforts culminated in a book Dr. Klugman wrote in 2023 with several other authors (including us) titled The Global Healing Curriculum Project: Promoting Intergenerational Healing and Bridging Trauma to Hope and Well-Being.
Dr. Klugman was a model of lifelong learning. Through his teaching, writing, and vision, he aspired to elevate the early childhood profession, the power of play, and the role that intergenerational relationships can have on post-traumatic healing.
What Is Intergenerational Trauma?
Intergenerational trauma occurs when the adverse effects of any traumatic event or experience are passed on to future generations (Rakoff et al. 1966; Lehrner & Yehuda 2018.). Historical oppression or violence against a particular group is a known cause of intergenerational trauma (Rosenthal 2021), which is why it is sometimes referred to as historical trauma (Mohatt et al. 2014).
A body of the work on intergenerational trauma is based on the trauma experienced by those who were impacted by the Holocaust, in which young children were separated abruptly from siblings, parents, grandparents, and other close relatives (Barel et al. 2010; Greene 2010). Many of these children never saw family members again and experienced trauma as they set off on their own new lives, often in new and strange places. While still an emerging area, more recent research has examined the impact of trauma on individuals who experienced the Holocaust firsthand as well as their family members and children. The broader literature on adverse childhood experiences would suggest links between stressful, traumatic events in childhood and negative health outcomes later in life (Anda & Felitti 2003). These findings suggest that the trauma of the Holocaust has had a major impact on the later health and well-being of millions of individuals, most of whom were Jewish but which also included the Romani people and other ethnicities and groups.
The experiences of Indigenous peoples (Isobel et al. 2018) and those interred in US Japanese-American camps during World War II (APA 2023) have also contributed to the literature around historical trauma. Indeed, trauma stemming from structural racism can impact development, learning, behavior, and both physical and mental health over time (e.g. Forde et al. 2019).
Too often, traumatic experiences are not talked about, and the social, emotional, and behavioral effects are not addressed. This can lead to short- and long-term effects for adults and children, their children, and their children’s children that greatly impact quality of life and their abilities to use their strengths, interests, experiences, and gifts in the world (Galea 2014).
However, studies have also elevated the idea of healing—as individuals, families, and across generations. Healing includes the concept of resilience and the fact that many victims of trauma emerge as strong and healthy adults. Contemporary research is focused on how resilience develops and what types of interventions can help facilitate the growth that leads to it. This is an area in which more research is needed from an individual and family systems perspective. Yet it inspired and informed Dr. Klugman’s thinking, writing, and efforts in his final years, a legacy passed on to the field.
References
Anda, R.F., & J. Felitti. 2003. “Origins and Essence of the Study.” ACE Reporter 1 (1): 1–4.
APA (American Psychological Association). 2023. “Intergenerational Trauma.” APA Dictionary of Psychology. Accessed Aug.27, 2024. dictionary.apa.org/intergenerational-trauma.
Barel, E., M.H. Van IJzendoorn, A. Sagi-Schwartz, & M.J. Bakermans-Kranenburg. 2010. “Surviving the Holocaust: A Meta-Analysis of the Long-Term Sequelae of a Genocide.” Psychological Bulletin 136 (5): 677–98.
Forde, A.T., D.M. Crookes, S.F. Suglia, & R.T. Demmer. 2019. “The Weathering Hypothesis as an Explanation for Racial Disparities in Health: A Systematic Review.” Annals of Epidemiology 33, 1–18.e3.
Galea, M. 2014. “The Relationship of Personality, Spirituality and Posttraumatic Growth to Subjective Wellbeing. Open Access Library Journal 1 (8). doi.org/10.4236/oalib.1101069.
Greene, R.R. 2010. “Holocaust Survivors: A Study in Resilience.” Journal of Gerontological Social Work 37 (1): 3–18.
Isobel, S., M.J. Goodyear, T. Furness, & K.N. Foster. 2018. “Preventing Intergenerational Trauma Transmission: A Critical Interpretive Synthesis.” Journal of Clinical Nursing 28: 7–8.
Lehrner, A., & R. Yehuda. 2018. “Trauma Across Generations and Paths to Adaptation and Resilience.” Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy 10 (1): 22–29.
Mohatt, N.V., A.B. Thompson, N.D. Thai, & J.K. Tebes. 2014. “Historical Trauma as Public Narrative: A Conceptual View of How History Impacts Present-Day Health.” Social Science & Medicine 106: 128–36.
Rakoff, V. J.J. Sigal, & N. Epstein. 1966. “Children and Families of Concentration Camp Survivors.” Canada’s Mental Health 14: 24–26.
Rosenthal, M. 2021. “Intergenerational Trauma: An Embodied Experience." International Body Pwilwsychotherapy Journal 20 (2): 80–86.
US Holocaust Museum. n.d. “Kindertransport, 1938–40.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. Accessed Aug. 9, 2024. encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kindertransport-1938-40.
Jennifer Kashuck is project manager of the Global Healing Curriculum Project.
Dolores Stegelin, PhD, is a professor emerita of early childhood education at Clemson University’s Eugene T. Moore School of Education.