Early childhood education and care: some of this week's news

Preface/Apology

Oh dear...I see that a huge amount of time has passed since I last wrote anything here. Something to do with the aftermath of Ofsted visiting and then being really busy with other stuff. I spent a very enjoyable evening at Froebel College , Roehampton University discussing some of the history of the great daycare/nursery education divide. I hope to write this up soon.

Also a delightful visit to Cornwall for a conference entitled "Enabling Outdoor Learning in the Early Years Foundation Stage" at the Eden Project . Organised by the extraordinary Wendy Titman, I had a wonderful day talking, listening and learning about outdoor play and learning. In her keynote address, Wendy praised some wonderful work going on in Cornwall. And despaired over suggestions that surgery will be the only option to solve the obesity crisis in childhood; that the first under-five has been prescribed anti-depressants in the UK; that a toy manufacturer won a major award for a plastic flower-in-a-box set.

If you get the chance to hear her talk - then go. If you don't - check out her new book. And if you are involved in the design or development of a Children's Centre, then the guidelines which she helped to write are, in my opinion, invaluable.

No Fear: Growing Up in a Risk Averse Society

In keeping with a major theme of the Cornwall conference, Tim Gill launched his new book No Fear: Growing Up in a Risk Averse Society.

The advance publicity for the book claims that a "nannying" approach to childhood from 5-10 is hindering children's development.

Tim sees through the superficial sophistication of many children, to a more important truth: they are being stopped from growing up and getting away from the surveillance of adults: "Although there is a widely-held view that children grow up faster today, in fact their lives are far more controlled than they were 30 years ago", he says

I'm pleased to say that in Cornwall, staff working with young children were talking with great enthusiasm about the need for challenge and risks, the importance of children spending time out in the wind, rain and snow, cooking outdoors, having places to go where they cannot be seen. I feel somewhat hopeful that attitudes are changing and that we will look back on the last twenty years as a strange aberration from the English tradition (which includes the post-war nursery and infant school tradition) of children playing freely outdoors.

Hatred of disabled people

I blogged a while back about hearing Richard Rieser speak in Tower Hamlets, London. One of Richard's themes was that it is not sufficient to think about discrimination against disabled people in terms of buildings that are not accessible, denial of employment, etc. Though these are very important issues.

There is also, in British society (and doubtless elsewhere) a hatred of disabled people which perhaps comes hand in hand with fears of difference, and the sort of fears which are perhaps stirred up in childhood by the equation of "badness" with "physical deformity". To take just one example - the witch in Hansel and Gretel, who captures the children, is stooped and blind.

As I listened to Richard, I wondered whether this is quite right - because another big theme in fairy tales, and popular culture, is that appearances are misleading. So the dwarfs turn out to be good, not scary, in Snow White, and the "beauty" falls in love with the "beast".

However, he has (shockingly, distressingly) enabled me to see that there is something horrifying going on in British society: persecuting, bullying, attacking and even killing people because they are disabled, or have learning difficulties.

Whereas the media is now quick to spot a theme, when people of the same race, or religion, are being attacked, I don't think they are really onto this one. The reports tend to be categorised as signs of the breakdown of law and order, or the ill effects of mobile phone cameras, "happy slapping", YouTube, etc.

In only the last 5 or so months, the following events have been reported:

A 50-year-old disabled woman from Hartlepool is subjected to taunts and bullying as she lies dying.

A gunman shoots a disabled pensioner as she tends her husband's grave.

Two men are attacked as they help their disabled brother into a car on Plymouth Hoe in Devon.

Two boys kill a partially-sighted man by kicking and stamping on him at a tram stop in Sheffield.

Three men and a youth launch a cowardly attack on a disabled man in Staffordshire for no obvious motive.

This list of recent news stories excludes the many crimes against disabled people for which there is an obvious motive to accompany the cruelty - for example, burglars who attack disabled people to rob them, muggers of disabled people, etc.

I wonder if Richard Rieser isn't on to two important things.

Firstly, that there are crimes being committed every day against disabled people which are analogous to, for example, the history of lynchings and beatings suffered by African-American people in the American south.

Secondly, while we continue to tolerate discrimination against disabled children in schools and nurseries, we are bringing up yet another generation of children to fear disability, difference, and all kinds of otherness.

I have sat (with parents) and listened to primary school headteachers say that:

We couldn't possibly have a child who needed gastro-nasal feeding in this school.
It would upset the other children too much.

Not enough room in the reception classroom to fit a wheelchair in.
Against Fire Regulations.

Couldn't admit a child with autism into reception.
It would be upsetting for his sister - she needs to get away from him at school.

It's generally unwise, I think, to make suppositions about what should be done in early childhood education by imagining a journey backwards from the crimes of adults and youths.

But isn't it possible that the bureaucratic violence of school discrimination all too easily easily grows into physical violence on the streets and in people's homes?

Early childhood education and care: some of this week's news

What does society thing of people who work with young children?

It's been a good week for news about this. A report in the Observer takes another look at a familiar question: why are there so few men in primary and nursery education?

Alongside the usual stuff - pay, status, being thought of as creepy and/or a paedophile - there are some other things which are new to me. Apparently male applicants for teacher training do a terrible job of filling out the application form and are less likely to prepare by undertaking voluntary work in schools. So even if applicant-levels are high, this won't necessarily translate into large numbers of men in teacher-training, let alone in schools.

This seems a little odd to me. Presumably most professional jobs and training courses place similar demands on applicants - so how come men are so well represented in all the other professional jobs, but not teaching?

The article recycles the usual stuff about how important it is for boys to have "male role models" in schools.

Is this true? Has anyone done a comparative study of boys who haven't had a male teacher, with boys who have? Are there any substantial differences?

What would it be like to be employed as a "male role model"? It seems to me like a devil's pact: you take the job but you give up the right to be yourself, to be anything other than a "role model".

A model which has been created by other people.

This is nicely discussed by a man interviewed for a paper by Charlie Owen about men working with young children - Facing the future: men's work?

He says: "I don't know if it's important what sort of role model you are....I'd like to think that I'm a role model that questions the way men have to be...but I don't consciously go out to do that, maybe I'm rejecting the old sort of stereotypes and role models that I had...by default that means I'm something else...and their role models sometimes...they might want a guy to play football."

The Observer article also claims that "one complaint and a teacher has to be suspended". No source is given. No act of Parliament or any official guidelines are cited. I suspect it's an urban myth and/or the over-defensive reaction of headteachers and local education authorities.

Of course where there is a possibility that a complaint has substance, then children must be protected. The teacher must be suspended.

But in some instances a quick investigation would indicate that a complaint was malicious or evidently without substance. It would be very foolish to suspend a teacher in a case like this.

You can read some more of my thoughts about men working with young children in Nursing Suspicion.

Focussing now on early childhood education, there's a powerful news piece in the Observer about the minimum wage including a case study of a nursery nurse.

Thank god for the minimum wage. But it isn't that great, is it?

How depressing to think that in return for caring for children, you will get - the lowest amount of money legally permitted.

The Financial Times, meanwhile, makes a stupid comment about "the archetypal Sloane heroine: under-educated, nursery-school teacher, pie-crust collar, the lot."

(The future Princess of Wales, of course).

In fact, Diana never worked in a maintained nursery school. She was a part-time assistant at the Young England Kindergarten, a day nursery in Pimlico, London. She wasn't a trained nursery teacher.

So there it is all rolled together: all work with young children is essentially the same, i.e needs no training, is not professional in standing, and is suitable for the "under-educated".

I wonder why it's got low status and minimum wage pay?

You can read the rest of the piece here.

On a more cheering note, the National Primary Headteachers' Association (NPHA) is urging more play in school . The argument is that after experiencing play-based nursery and reception classes, children are confronted with a real shock in year one (when many are still only five years old) with much more formal work. I'd say it's a slightly romantic argument, because the majority of reception classes I get to see (and even some nursery classes) are already pretty formal, with play being used to fill in time between the "real work".

My view is that a more European outlook - i.e. starting formal schooling later, when children are six or seven - has much to commend it. I hope the NPHA has some influence.

Finally, one of the daftest stories of the week has to be the report that Butlins is hiring nursery nurses to work on their holiday camps giving out parenting advice.

My advice (take it or leave it): have a relaxing holiday. Get away from the know-alls.

Ofsted...

...came and went, which is why there's been a bit of gap. Might write something about what that was like later in the year.