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?
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
Hi Esther,
ReplyDeleteIt is disheartening to admit that so long as we are living under the dominant discourse of neoliberalism the image of the child is one who has economical value, "as human capital", "as exploitable and replaceable future workers and as current consumers who themselves can be bought and sold to the highest bidder" (Apple, 1999, p. 9, 11) and the education system as "function[ing] largely to integrate children into the capitalist economic system" (Bialostok & Kamberelis, 2010, p. 300)
It is with great hopes that on a more localized and individualized level, that educators don't actually see children in this way. However, we are significantly challenged when the practice of "Readiness" and the implementations of assessments and standardized tests are heavily imposed and relied on within the education system. Winter and Kelley (2008), (their image of the child: as economical resources) convinces the merits of readiness programs and states that,
"[p]ublic investments in this program have yielded increased earnings and tax revenues, as well as reduced crime rates….Economists and educators agree that early intervention with high-quality school readiness programs offers advantages to individual children and families and is also economically beneficial to society, because it builds a stronger workforce and improves the quality of life for all citizen" (p.261).
Why would we not want to have a rich society and high quality of living with less deviant individuals and instead have more productive individuals to maintain this? The ethical question is, at who's expense? The neoliberalistic reply is that it is at the child's expense. These ideas sets huge obstacles in our attempts to be ethical in our work with children because the focus is seeing children as dollar figures to solve our present and future situation. How do we break free from this thinking and practicing when we are so enmeshed within this neoliberal discourse? Is it a matter of continually reminding ourselves and advocating (in our practice and in our conversations with others, and so on) that children are not just commodities? What can be done with the systems that heavily value "economic rationality" (Apple, 1999, p. 9) over human rationality?
References:
Apple, M. (1999). Freire, neo-liberalism, and education. Discourse studies in the cultural politics of education, 20(1), 5-20.
Bialostock, S. & Kamberelis, G. (2010). New capitalism, risk, and subjectification in an early childhood classroom. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 11(3), 299-312.
Winter, S. & Kelley, M. (2008). Forty years of school readiness research: what have we learned. Journal of Childhood Education, 261-267.