The Child as Chimera in a Shifting Terrain:
Divergent discursive trajectories surrounding “compulsory” UK
birth to three programs
Presentation by Ruth L. PeachUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison
Overview
• Theoretical Framing
• Why the UK? Why now? Socio/historio/political context of the UK Childcare Act 2006
• Discursive history of the child as chimera in the UK Childcare Act 2006
• Summary
Theoretical Framing
This paper is situated within Foucault’s ideas that truth and power are inextricably intertwined. We perceive and create reality through certain types of culturally and historically situated beliefs, or “truths.” Truth is neither universal nor historically constant, but is marked by disjunctures where one understanding of truth is replaced by another.
I look at how the Childcare Act 2006 is historically and nationally situated. I explore the discursive history of the policy, or the underlying “truths” that make up the “reality” of the young child that this policy creates and is created from.
I argue that the substantive developments in the field legislated by the Childcare Act 2006 are problematic and may propagate the same inequities that they are intended to solve. This is the case for educational reform in multiple contexts; the UK policy is the example I use here.
Why the UK?• Education Act 2002 situated
three-to-five year-olds centrally as “Foundation Stage”, located at the beginning of formal publicly-funded schooling, a break from previous UK policies
• Education Act 1998 pertained
only to school-aged children aged five and up, placing younger children as outside the domain of the Act
• Childcare Act 2006 places birth-to-three year-olds in hybrid area as “Early Years Foundation Stage” related to primary schooling but not mandatory, bridging “public” and “private” roles
• Childcare Act 1991 regulated children’s health, care, welfare, residential centers, prevention of cruelty to children, and child care, limited to “private” realm
“An ‘age’ does not pre-exist the statements which express it, nor the visibilities which fill it”
(Deleuze, 1986/1988, p. 48).
The UK is the metropolitan center of a former world-wide empire, and has had recent large-scale immigration from former colonies.
Primary schools in the UK are under pressure to assimilate large numbers of culturally, linguistically and racially diverse students.
These students are absent from the explicit discourse about early childhood education; they form a background of media and public conversation about young children.
Why now?
Socio/Historio/Political Context• In order for a child to be the focus of reform, not only must that child
be targeted for inspection or regulation but often, the child is also constructed as different, at risk, not of the norm, and in need of intervention to be “saved” from (and to “save” others from) danger or risk. That child must also be knowable, defined, and bounded.
• Further complications of “truths” about the child point to recent shifts in the imaginary of the child within the national imaginaries (Anderson, 1991) of young children which have occurred, in part, because of new discourses related to the importance of the evolving and knowable brain and in part because of new policies and legislation that reinforce the significance of early years learning that have arisen in the global discourse about young children.
The familiar child in a comfortable “box” of recognition in the present is therefore troubled by the historical work that catalyzes that recognition
toward a loss of familiarity...What one might know or think about the child at the outset, the consoling play of recognitions, is therefore problematized by
“moves” across discursive space, securing at the end an ambiguity, uncertainty, and strangeness (Baker, 2001, p. 52).
Discursive History of the Childcare Act 2006
Shifts and breaks between the Childcare Bill and the Childcare Act: divergent discursive trajectories of “left” versus “right”
Chimera as symbol of the changing roles of the young children created by policies as “public” and “private” citizens
Discourses of “Englishness(es)”, brain research, and normalization within the policies
Shifts and breaks between the Childcare Bill and the Childcare
Act: divergent discursive trajectories of “left” versus “right”
• The UK “Left” proposes the Childcare Bill• The “Right” in the UK, US & Canada react to the
proposed bill• The discourse of “dangerous outsider” becomes
visible• The Childcare Act 2006, passed July 2006
The UK “Left” Proposes the Childcare Bill
• Introducing the bill, Children’s Minister Beverley Hughes said the program would provide “integrated care and education from birth. We want to establish a coherent framework that defines progression for young children from nought to five.”
• Hughes announced “The forthcoming Childcare Bill will be good news for parents, for children and their families and a cornerstone in delivering our vision for early years and childcare…This fits with our overall aim for the Bill that it should drive up quality, ensure children are safe and simplify the existing bureaucratic regime” (BBC News, November 1, 2005).
The “Right” in the UK, US & Canada react to the proposed billA US & Canada-based conservative website included the following article after the UK bill was proposed. This site included the email address of UK Children’s Minister Beverly Hughes so she could be contacted with their protests.
UK Proposes Mandatory Preschool from BirthA proposed law to mandate that all children enter preschool from birth is being debated by UK lawmakers…The Birth to Three Matters proposes to be compulsory for infants and toddlers, equal to the requirement that older children attend school” (Terry Vanderheyden, Nov. 11, 2005, LifeSiteNews.com).
Meanwhile in the UK, a charitable organization had this to say about the bill:“We are now in danger of taking away children's childhood when they leave the maternity ward…From the minute you are born and your parents go back to work, as the government has encouraged them to do, you are going to be ruled by the Department for Education. It is absolute madness.” (Margaret Morrissey, UK National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations [NCPTA] press officer).
The discourse of “dangerous outsider” becomes visible
• Education Secretary Ruth Kelly said: "Mothers and fathers will have the certainty of knowing that whatever their background, high-quality early years education and childcare services will be available to support them and their children" (BBC News, emphasis added).
• The bill calls for a "better start" for under-fives and to "close the gap" between those from different backgrounds” (BBC News, emphasis added).
The compromise, the Childcare Act 2006,
became law in JulyThe discourse of development permeates this Act, using “universal” science to bridge the two political stances. These are the key requirements for early years programs under the Act:
Personal, social and emotional development Communication, language and literacy Problem solving, reasoning and numeracy Knowledge and understanding of the world Physical development Creative development (Childcare Act 2006 pg. 21)
Chimera as symbol of the changing roles of the young children created by policies as “public” and “private”
citizensDiverse cultural forces create a unique hybrid or chimera consisting of uneasily coexisting beliefs about the young child in the UK as embodied through this specific series of policies
What is a chimera…and what does it have to do with UK children?
It is a symbolic image of the diversity of discursive forces
It represents hybridity of “public” and “private” citizen
It has apparently distinct identities externally; blended tissue internally
It is an illusion, not real, a mirage
Chimerically, the blended tissue of the child as public and private citizen makes the distinction illusory at the same time that the child is apparently enacting one or both roles.
I use the terms public and private in this way: “public” refers to the child as a citizen or proto-citizen in direct relationship with the nation/state.
Childcare Act 2006Blends “education”
and “care” roles in out-of-home settings
Childcare Act 1991Regulates
child situated in home
Childcare Bill 2006Creates mandatory
programs for birth-to-three year-olds
outside of home
“Private” “Public”
Discourses within the policies:
“Englishness(es)”, marketization & human capital, brain research,
and normalization
It is my contention that several factors intertwined to create a major shift in discursive understandings about young children and education in the UK at this time. These factors include:
• Increasing levels of immigration and cultural fears about the unassimilable “other” bring concerns about “Englishness(es)”
• Globalizing discourses about marketization and human capital
• Shifting understandings about young children through brain research
“Englishness(es)”
Primary schools in the UK are under pressure to assimilate large numbers of culturally, linguistically and racially diverse students. These students are absent from the explicit discourse about early childhood education; they form a background of media and public conversation about young children.
Marketization and Human Capital
Young children, as a potential economic resource, are now subject to a different form of surveillance than when they were discursively situated as being only in the private sphere of family.
Shifting understandings about young children
through brain researchAs brain research in pre-verbal infants and even in babies before birth showed them to be active individuals and learners, beings with potential that can be enhanced or expanded through the application of the “correct” methods, the caregiver(s) of young children have increasingly become the site for increased direction from psychologists and legislators as specific practices were prescribed to ensure a normal, or super-normal, child.
SummaryIn the shifting domain of early childhood education and care at the beginning of the 21st century the discursive constructions of the young child, the citizen, the family, schooling, and the home shape and are shaped by divergent trajectories of “right” and “left”. The tension between these divergent discourses is reflected in the Childcare Act 2006 as it is in the policies in many nations at this time and the result is embryonic. What is more obvious is that this tension works against our important goals of healing and unification as these two political positions, each in their own way, pit fear of the “dangerous outsider” against the goal of care for the child in early years policies.