The child, the teacher and the school (education)

What is the identity of the preschool? How do we understand knowledge? Who is the child? The great importance attached to this last question, sometimes put as 'What is our image of the child?', reflects an awareness of the many answers that are possible and how the answer chosen is very productive, for better or worse: 

Many different images could be possible: highlighting what the child is and has, can be and can do, or on the contrary emphasizing what the child is not and does not have, what he or she cannot be or do. The image of the child is above all a cultural (and therefore social and political) convention that makes it possible to recognize (or not) certain qualities and potentials in children... What we believe about children thus becomes a determining factor in defining their social and ethical identity, their rights and the educational contexts offered them (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005, p.137).

Educators have to negotiate with children, develop their capacity to listen rather than transmit programmes. We see the context [of the preschool] as a meeting point, of children and adults, which offers more possibilities than we could think about at the beginning... We desire to discover the constructive potentials in the children, to give children the freedom to find out and transform the world. What is important is possibilities, not targets... Our education is 'targeted' to develop children's consciousness that not one single world exists. Pedagogy is the cultivation of many worlds, the opposite of Candide. We must not do our utmost to justify the existing world, [but support] the creative potential of individuals towards the dimension of diversity (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005, p.135). 

This book arises out a lifetime's preoccupation with quest, with pursuit... the quest has been deeply personal... it has been in some sense deeply public as well: that of a person struggling to connect the understanding of education,... to the making and remaking of a public space, a space of dialogue and possibility... The aim is to find (or create) an authentic public space... Such a space requires the provision opportunities for the articulation of multiple perspectives in multiple idioms, of which something common can be brought into being. It requires, as well, a consciousness of the normative as well as the possible: of what ought to be, from a moral and ethical point of view, and what is in the making, what might be in an always open world... My hope is to remind people of what it means to be alone among others; to achieve freedom in dialogue with others for the sake of personal fulfillment and the emergence of a democracy dedicated to life and decency (Greene, 1998, p. 175). 

It is not too much to say that neoliberal goals are embedded in a culture's way of thinking. It not only governs and controls our thinking and action but also raise question on what it means to educate others, or to be educated, well in the neoliberal society.



Reference

Dahlberg, G. & Moss, P. (2005). Ethics and politics in early childhood education. New York, NY: RoutledgeFalmer.

Pinar, W. (1998). The Passionate Mind of Maxine Greene: I Am...Not Yet. Bristol, PA: Falmer Press, Taylor & Francis Inc. 

Photographs by Esther Han

Neoliberalism and Education

Nicolas Burbules(2004) states that education can allow people to fulfill their potential, to become more free, more self-reliant and self determining as well as promote the advancement of society, build democracy, promote social cohesion, and stability (p.5). Furthermore, Dehlberg and Moss (2005) emphasize that the advanced liberal state, like neoliberal economics, espouses a strategy of freedom - but of a certain kind. It is the freedom to make individual choices, to enter the market as an informed consumer calculating best values in relation to cost and preference, to be oneself and do one’s own thing. Freedom, as Rose puts it ‘is seen as autonomy, the capacity to realize one’s desires in one’s secular life, to fulfill one’s potential through one’s own endeavors, to determined one’s own existence through acts of choice.’ The state thus governs not through coercion, but through citizens governing themselves through the practice of such freedom (p.45). They also add that,

In order to act freely, the subject must be shaped, guided and moulded into one capable of responsibly exercising that freedom through systems of domination, Subjection and subjectification are laid upon one another. Each is condition of the other... On the one hand [advanced liberal practices of rule] contract, consult, negotiate, create partnerships, even empower and activate forms of agency, liberty and the choice of individuals, consumers, professionals, households neighborhoods and communities. On the other hand, they set norms, standards, benchmarks, performance indicators, quality controls and best practice standards, to monitor, measure and render calculable the performance of these various agencies. The position of ‘freedom’ on advanced liberal regimes of government is exceedingly ambivalent (p.46).

How is the concept of freedom is challenged under the dominant discourse of neoliberalism?


The article below is focused on neoliberalism in education in the United States. However, many schools in Canada has been adapted and implemented early intervention with high-quality school readiness programs.

Neoliberalism in Education 
Market-Style Pressures Inform Content of Race to the Top Policy

Jan 21, 2010 Candace Cofield

Since the 1980s, multiple neoliberal policies have been implemented in education, social welfare, and the economy to shrink “big government,” and redistribute wealth upwards to stimulate economic recovery and growth.

Major examples include the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Act of 1965 in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which includes sanctions and punishments for students and schools that don’t achieve “adequate yearly progress “or high standardized test scores; The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, which is also known as welfare reform; and the Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994, which assisted in deregulating the banking industry.

Neoliberal Influence in Race to the Top

Today, the neoliberal agenda for education is supported by both Democrats and Republicans. It continues to dominate federal policies such as Race to The Top, which is an education policy that offers 4.35 billion in education aid to states that meet most or all of its nineteen measurements of competitiveness for the funds. It echoes neoliberal, market-driven themes including merit pay based on student test score achievement, school choice, and the proliferation of fast-track training for teachers.

• Merit Pay: Teachers compete to get a pay increase or bonus based on their success rate with increasing student achievement as measured by standardized test scores. 
• School Choice: Schools compete for students based on their ability to maintain their school charter. 
• Alternative Routes to Teaching: Teacher preparation programs compete to attract students by incentivizing a fast route into the classroom. 

How education is seen in the article and how "freedom"(p.46) regulates and governs not only children but also teachers? Why is freedom taken for granted? How can schools maintain as loci of ethical practice rather than ethics being a matter of prescribing, transmitting and applying a code of rules(p.12)? 

References:

Burbules, N. (2004). Ways of Thinking About Educational Quality. Educational Researcher. Volume 33, No.6, pp.4-10

Cofield, C. (2010). Neoliberalism in Education. Market-Style Pressures Inform Content of Race to the Top Policy. Retrieved from  http://www.suite101.com/content/neoliberalism-in-education-a192209

Dahlberg, G. & Moss, P. (2005). Ethics and politics in early childhood education. New York, NY: RoutledgeFalmer.

Absence

“Every $1 spent returned between $1.45 and $1.58 of economic activity, had positive employment multipliers, and enabled sizable parental earnings” (Coalition’s study of Winnipeg).

“Economics of childcare,” asserting that “investment in early childhood education leads to major payoffs down the road” (New Brunswick Advisory Council on the Status of Women 2005).

“Investment in child care is clearly part of the solution to regional and local economic development” (Child Care Advocacy Forum 2006).

“Childcare is both an economic industry in its own right, as well as providing a service that enables the rest of the economy to thrive” (Prentice and McCracken 2004).

“These children,” the authors go on to prophesy, “will or will not become the inventors, managers and entrepreneurs of tomorrow, depending on how well we help them reach their potential” (p.695).

“Dollars spent on education for young children are far more effective than dollars spent at any other time in a person’s life (p.694).

“Today’s business leaders see that early childhood education is important to future U.S. economic competitiveness and a worthwhile investment” (p.692).

“The likelihood that children will become net economic and social contributors to society” (Committee for Economic Development 2006).

“Investments in early childhood programs can improve child outcomes, ease the burden on public resources, enable higher labor force participation, and lead to higher future productivity and economic growth” (Joint Economic Committee 2007).

These are some of the statements that are presented in the article High Stakes: The "Investable Child and the Economic Reframing of Childcare by Susan Prentice (2009).

Childhood is excluded and children are nowhere to be found in such statements as the one above. These statements are valid only if education can be exist without children. Is the notion of child-to-invest-in paradigm and education as a space for producing a possible ‘future contributor’ to society ethical? Is it possible to create a space in the midst of the dilemma? What is the place of children and childhood in our society? 

A: a space of education with predetermined goals and the increasing dominance of a certain sort of economic or business ethics whose overriding and universal value is return on investment.
B: a space that carries the meaning of being a social space, a domain of social practices and relationships, a cultural space, where values, rights and cultures are created and a discursive space for differing perspectives and forms of expression, where there is room for dialogue, confrontation, deliberation and critical thinking, where children and others can speak and be heard (p.9).
If we consider education as possibility of new possibilities (Badiou, 2003), can both spaces be coexist? Where do children stand?

The thrust of whole child education is that the child's entire being - desire, attitudes, wishes - is caught up in the educative process. Educating the whole child means not only the cognitive, affective and behavioural aspects, but the child's innermost desires... No aspect of the child must be left uneducated: education touches the spirit, the soul, motivation, wishes, desires, dispositions and attitudes of the child to be educated (Fendler 2001).

Watch more of Sir Ken Robinson

http://ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html

Moss, P., Petrie, P. (2002). From Children’s Services to Children’s Space. Public Policy, Children and Childhood. New York: RoutledgeFalmer.

Robinson, K (Speaker). (2010). Why teaching is 'not like making motorcars. (2010, March 17) CNN News. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/03/17/ted.ken.robinson/index.html

Prentice, S. (2009) High Stakes: The "Investable Child and the Economic Reframing of Childcare

Best Investment?

I strongly believe that early educational space, representation and configuration of image of the child and his identity are highly relevant and interrelated. However, early childcare education within the neoliberal economic system has created a particular image of the child. Dahlberg and Moss (2005) quotes Popkewitz and Bloch (2001) that the subject is created to fit the neoliberal workforce - as well as advanced liberalism's ideal of citizenship. This subject is an entrepreneurial self, a flexible 'actor', ready to respond to new eventualities and empowered through self-reflections and self-analysis: 'the twenty-first-century child has to be prepared to be a global citizen/ worker, flexible, adaptable, ready for uncertainties in work as well as in the family' (p.38).

Susan Prentice (2009) in the article "High Stakes: The “Investable” Child and the Economic Reframing of Childcare" addresses that much of the enthusiasm for investing in children draws on the work of Nobel Prize–winning economist James Heckman (1999), who has warned: “We cannot afford to postpone investing in children until they become adults, nor can we wait until they reach school—a time when it may be too late to intervene”. The work of Heckman and other leading economists undergirds the oft-repeated wisdom that returns on investment in the early child development period exceed investment in any other period of human development (p. 2)


The ideas that are raised in the video shows that the schools are conceptualized in overly instrumental ways, as a means to produce predetermined and calculable ends through deploying human technologies (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005, p.35). Where is the voice of children? Is possibility of a children's agency invisible in the space of childcare as investment of economic return?

More information on Early Childhood Investment
greatstartforkids.org

Dahlberg, G. & Moss, P. (2005). Ethics and politics in early childhood education. New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 35-39

Heckman, J. (2009) Economic Return on Early Childhood Investment [online video]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO2oFtY7tZA

Prentice, S. (2009) High Stakes: The "Investable Child and the Economic Reframing of Childcare, 2-9

What If

If I Had My Child to Raise Over Again

If I had my child to raise all over again,

I'd finger-paint more and point the finger less.

I'd do less correcting and more connecting.

I'd take my eyes off my watch, and watch with my eyes.

I would care to know less and know to care more.

I'd take more hikes and fly more kites.

I'd stop playing serious, and seriously play.

I'd run through more fields and gaze at more stars.

I'd do more hugging and less tugging.

I would be firm less often, and affirm much more.

I'd build self-esteem first, and the house later.

I'd teach less about the love of power,

And more about the power of love.

— Diane Loomans

Full Esteem Ahead, 100 Ways to Build Self-Esteem 

in Children & Adults, 1994

Commodification of Child/hood and Education

It is inevitable, we are living in the consumer society. Things are mass produced, sold, bought and wasted. All products hold their own value and function. They are created and displayed in certain ways to hail consumers. Commodification was originally termed in Marxism, it is the process by which material objects are turned into marketable goods with monetary (exchange) value. The process cannot be done within the products themselves, rather, they have to go through many hands including advertisement, production management and labour before they are finished. The finished products must fulfill necessary conditions such as function, performance and/or quality. Jack Zipes (2010) emphasizes that displays of the child has become a good, to be sure, a human good, that can make choices and maybe highly creative and intelligent. But these choices are defined by market condition. Marketing and sale of goods and commodities depend on display and dissemination of the displayed goods. Moreover, according to Becker (1976), in the midst of neoliberalism, everything is reduced to economics, 'all things desired or valued - from personal attributes to good government - are commodities, including children. All commodities can be expressed in monetary terms, at prices determined through market, and traded on the market. In the book, Ethics and Politics in Early Childhood Education (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005, p.34~51), the authors address how these new economic conditions, neoliberal capitalism, brings contemporary influence into the labour force as well as the education system.
A culture of commodification does more than undermine the ideals of a secure and happy childhood; it also exhibits the amiss faith of a society in which, for children, "there can be only one kind of value, market value; one kind of success, profit; one kind of existence, commodities; and one kind of social relationship, markets"(Grossberg, 2005). Children now inhabit a cultural landscape in which they can only recognize themselves in terms preferred by the market. What is image of the children in such a businessified education system with free market fundamentalism? How is the space of a early learning classroom taken for granted? Yet, Dahlberg & Moss (2005) emphasizes: children’s spaces as spaces for children’s own agendas, although not precluding adults agendas, where children are understood as fellow citizens with rights, participating members of the social groups in which they find themselves, agents of their own lives but also interdependent with others, co-constructors of knowledge, identity and culture, children who co-exist with others in society on the basis of who they are, rather than who they will become (p.106). How ‘children’s space’ rather than ‘children’s service’ (p.106) form child’s identity in a way that the image of the child in neoliberal society- market- can be disrupted? 

Main researchers whom I am inspired by are:
Gunilla Dahlberg, Pat Petrie, Peter Moss
Text:
1) From Children's services to Children's Space: Public Policy, Children and Childhood
2) Ethics and Politics in Early childhood Education

Dahlberg, G., Moss, P. (2005). Ethics and Politics in Early Childhood Education. Technology as first Practice (p. 36). New York: RoutledgeFalmer 

Moss, P., Petrie, P. (2002). From Children’s Services to Children’s Space. Public Policy, Children and Childhood. New York: RoutledgeFalmer.

Zipes, J. (2010). Children and their Representation: Re-tooling and Reconfiguring Children: Conflicts in the Civilizing Process. 

Retrieved from http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2010/02/rethinking-children-childhood-in-the-21st-century-children-and-their-representation/