The Standardized Childhood (Is this what grandparents want?)

By Tom Drummond, North Seattle Community College

My new book arrived: Standardized Childhood: the political and cultural struggle over early education by Bruce Fuller, Stanford University Press, 2007. I was looking forward to this, since Bruce Fuller (UC Berkeley) has investigated charter schools rather thoroughly. I am not disappointed in what I have read so far.

In my work and writing I feel I have not been articulating very well what I see as the hidden agenda present in NAEYC Accreditation of Associate Degree Programs and in NAEYC accreditation of child care, too. All these standards efforts are touted as improving early childhood, but where is the evidence? I don’t see it, which makes me wonder why so many people are accepting more work and paying more money for complying with standards set by somebody else that imply that we are incompetent or deficient in some way as if a group of experts somewhere knows better than we do.

Don’t we know how to care for little children? Don’t we know when children are happy and we are happy?

Don’t people see the widespread fact that the best early childhood programs, the ones with happy children and happy teachers, actually pay their teachers well enough for them to stay at it for all the years it takes to get good at it?

There continues to be no political action to pay staff in early education a decent, family-support wage. Something is in the way. To me it is like those dark clouds in space that block the light from the galaxies beyond, or its that elephant in the room we are not allowed to talk about. So, I bought Bruce Fuller’s book: Standardized Childhood.

My friends in Ohio are complaining about the effects of the standardized childhood.
“I was in another terrible center today. One of this sites we use that just does silly things (rotate every seven minutes! duh!) called for a reference...referencing what, that they are idiots?” (Community college ECE faculty member)
“I would love to work more from the real world experience with education. It's tough being in a place that teaches the standards and has "cookie cutter" (<http://www.Taskstream.com>) lesson plans and busy work entries.” (University ECE faculty member)
They are seeing more and more rigidity, less and less ECE student motivation, sad children and grumpy teachers.

Bruce Fuller is more articulate than I about the problem. Here is how he phrases it in his introduction (xviii-xix). He began by reviewing the pressures of reform and the push-back that occurs. (An example I am familiar with is the “Early Childhood Benchmarks” in Washington State, written in New York, and the push-back from under-represented cultures to revise them to be more inclusive and local: use of the work comes to a screeching halt.)

“This debate over the child’s inner nature and how best to nurture children also bumps into a classic dilemma that has beset educators throughout the modern period: should child-rearing institutions seek to transform youngsters and their communities, making sure they become members of the nation-state, acquiring individualistic skills which allow them to fill jobs in a competitive economic system? Or should schools be conserving institutions rooted in the knowledge, language, and cultural mores of particular groups, working as democratic organizations that build from the social foundations of family and community? The debate over universal preschool intersects similar contention around charter schools, small schools, and vouchers for private and religious schooling. At its core, the question is: can a bureaucratic state be trusted to build one best system of education for a feisty, pluralistic society? Who gets to decide what children should be learning, through what forms of social relations? And when the state gains authority to make these decisions, whose interests are being advanced?

“My aim in this book is not to push a single philosophy of the child’s in-born nature, nor to advance one uniform institution to advance children’s development. Instead, I hope to spark and empirically inform this essential debate over how young children should be raised and taught within a pluralistic society, and who gets to decide on the goals and means of child rearing. Part of my point is that the new advocates are pushing a standard remedy with little understanding of the historical context, of how they risk closing off options. We will see how proponents, obsessively focused on finding an effective political strategy, may inadvertently narrow the way parents come to see, and fell confident about, how they are supposed to raise their own children.

“And while good liberals and stalwart conservatives both pitch universal futures for America’s children, this book urges you to think about whether modern systems-building assumptions still fit the diversity of families and neighborhoods that increasingly make up America’s vibrant society.”

It seems to me that we have to be very clear about the existence of this debate, especially when both frames seem bent on building a prescriptive system. We always have to answer his central question: Whose interests are being advanced?

History lesson: the structure of public school has been built by corporate industrialists, not educators or educational philosophers. Goals 2000 was written not by the governors who attended the 1989 Charlottesville Summit during the senior Bush’ administration but by corporate education "experts" who were and continue to be pushing public education as defined by math and science achievement and competitive business success. You can hear that voice speak clearly in this speech by an IBM executive in New York State in 2005.

The corporate goal is for children to become, as Bruce Fuller says, “members of the nation-state, acquiring individualistic skills which allow them to fill jobs in a competitive economic system.” The goal is not stated as enabling children to learn to live in cooperative social groups discovering themselves through each other and caring for their communities and the planet.

You know the metaphor of interests I would like to see inform the policies and institutions? Grandparents.

You see them. I see them. New grandparents explode with excitement and joy in their new grandchildren. They see possibility in each child. They see uniqueness in each child. They treasure the unfolding.

They offer new experiences the parents can’t give. They offer time. They bring joy into children’s lives. No push. No control. No “teaching” stuff.

The interests of corporate America are far from their minds. School, good education, and maybe college they know are ahead, but not now. Right now we have these children, these precious, precious children. We can listen to them, play, share time, and enjoy.

Why can’t we found our policies, institutions, teacher education programs, and classes in the image of grandparents enjoying young children? We know how to do this; it isn’t rocket science.

I think we have to be watchful and very, very strong. We have to talk with one voice. Women know, yet many women dominating this field seem to be acquiescing to male corporate pressures. I wish we had more voices, loud, as suffragettes, marching in the streets demanding spaces for, not control over, children and families.

Tom Drummond
Early Childhood Education
North Seattle Community College
tdrummon@sccd.ctc.edu