The Child as Chimera in a Shifting Terrain: Divergent discursive trajectories surrounding compulsory

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The Child as Chimera in a Shifting Terrain
Divergent discursive trajectories surrounding
compulsory UK birth to three programs

• Presentation by Ruth L. Peach
• University of Wisconsin-Madison
• rlpeach_at_wisc.edu

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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

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Theoretical Framing

• This paper is situated within Foucaults 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.

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Why the UK?

• 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 childrens health,
  care, welfare, residential centers, prevention of
  cruelty to children, and child care, limited to
  private realm

• 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

An age does not pre-exist the statements which
express it, nor the visibilities which fill it
(Deleuze, 1986/1988, p. 48).
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Why now?

• 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.

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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).
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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

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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

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The UK Left Proposes the Childcare Bill

• Introducing the bill, Childrens 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 childcareThis
  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).

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The Right in the UK, US Canada react to the
proposed bill

• A US Canada-based conservative website
  included the following article after the UK bill
  was proposed. This site included the email
  address of UK Childrens Minister Beverly Hughes
  so she could be contacted with their protests.
• UK Proposes Mandatory Preschool from Birth
• A proposed law to mandate that all children
  enter preschool from birth is being debated by UK
  lawmakersThe 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 wardFrom
  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).

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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).

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The compromise, the Childcare Act 2006, became
law in July

• The 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)

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Chimera as symbol of the changing roles of the
young children created by policies as public
and private citizens

• Diverse 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

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What is a chimeraand 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
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• 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.

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Private

Public
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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

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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.

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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.

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Shifting understandings about young children
through brain research

• As 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.

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Summary

• In 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.