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

rlpeach@wisc.edu

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.