People Under 3 Report

EDCR202 People Under Three

“PEOPLE under three? You mean BABIES? Those aren’t ‘people’ yet!! You’re just studying nappy changing until you can have your own baby. Why would you waste your time with those studies? Mothers have been taking care of babies forever without having to ‘study’ it!”

I am glad you appreciated my off-cuff response to that question and asked for more. In this report I will lay out why I believe his claim was wrong and why Early Childhood Education (ECE) for under 3s is important, so important as to require to be the focus of a field of study and as laying the groundwork for identity, confidence, and learning.

Early Childhood is not babysitting, and so what if it was?

How many mothers and parents do you know who need additional support and pastoral care? Who need for their kids the kind of care event hat you get in care? If ECE was babysitting, and later I’ll explain how it’s not, that wouldn’t be a bad thing as it’s not good for children to be raised in the isolation created by the dissolution of the extended family in western society (Johnston; & Deisher, 1973).

Mothers haven’t been taking care of babies forever without training, in the past, for most cultures, a whole village raised a child, parents alone without support or extended family to give the required stimulation and care for a child to flourish is a very modern and western invention. Mothers co-raised their children in a community where they were trained and taught by grandparents, godparents, extended family, and other community members with experience. Looking at many Pasifika (Rameka, et al., 2016), Indigenous (Herber, 2001) and Asian communities today you can still see this style of childcare and looking into Europe’s past (Pernoud, 1962) this was the case there with vast networks of dozens of godparents covering every aspect of life, intergenerational and communal living which saw children supported and exposed to a stimulation, care, relationships and learning from a whole community not just their mothers.

Nursey’s and ECE centres provide that engagement and relationships for under 3s who would otherwise so lacking in the modern system. Kaiako need training and education in how to best provide that support, care and stimulation young children need to take advantage of their capacity to learn and build the diverse relationships they need to build their own identities and dispositions: understandings of who they are who they can be which are essential to future life, learning and relationships. Without training and access to the theory and science around ECE kaiako won’t be able to best support under 3s in this vital early learning or meet the diverse needs of learners.

And we need to know how to address the needs of all children, we can’t rely on parents to tell us what their kid needs, and all children have individual and diverse needs, and you need to study to learn enough tools to face all those situations. I have a friend with two children who are a lot of work and when her youngest went into centre, even though she had the experience and training to know what her kid needed she couldn’t explain that as she was just tired, exhausted, and more than anything just needed to hand him over to a trained kaiako who had the skills and knowledge to help without her needing all that extra labour.

Children under 3 uses their whole brains, it’s the only time in their lives when their whole brain is burning with learning before the synaptic pruning steps in and they need an environment to take best advantage of the fizzy whirlpool of connecting electrons as the electricity in the new growing brains sears glowing pathways in every direction before they set in the patterns most used (The secret life of the brain. Episode 1 The Baby's Brain: wider than the sky, 2002), as such it is especially vital that under 3s get the involvement not just of parents, who might be too tired to think themselves, but a rich stimulation of relationships and experiences, that kaiako are trained to provide. 

Knowing more than “changing nappies.”

ECE is more than just “changing nappies” or proxy-parenting, kaiako are responsible under Te Whāriki (Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga | Ministry of Education., 2017) for providing under 3s with enrichment and support their needs, learning and development, exemplified and best described through the five strands. To look at their example, changing nappies can’t just be a functional act and we need the understanding to no why, and not change nappies that way but instead approach that act through the five strands in order to make that interaction one which upholds the child’s mana, rights and contributes to their understanding and trust in the world and ability to act within it. For example, changing nappies carried out following a Pikler method (Marlen, 2017) of respectful care, the practice of centring the child in such activities and not the activity, aligns with Te Whāriki (2017) strand’s: Through comminating directly with the child, respecting their boundaries and focusing on them for the duration of the activity they can be affirmed as individuals and kaiako can recognise them as such. Through use of language with them and close attention to their comfort, reactions and languages, verbal and nonverbal, their communication development and our understanding and ability to communicate them is enhanced. Through respectful care (Belasko, et al., 2019), asking consent and treating them as people not pieces in a nappy changing factory, belonging, contribution and wellbeing are all enhanced as through been treated respectfully by kaiako they learn to respect others and themselves, developing identities that know their limitations, comfort and consent. Can trust and feel safe enough in the centre environment and around adults to build those relationships, dispositions and links to the people and worlds around them to explore, learn and grow. Modern understanding of human development is rooted in a socio-cultural perspective valuing humans as individuals who co-construct their learning (Vygotsky, et al., 1978) and views of the world through their relationships with people, places and things (Rogoff, 2003), through this we can see the importance of how under 3s are treated and how this effects all aspects of their being and futures.

Seeing the many aspects and impacts on the child in just this one example of what might be considered an insignificant interaction, as seeing this as an interaction and not as a chore, the kotahitaka or holistic nature of ECE teaching and the development of infants is shown. Every interaction and every aspect of teaching under 3s impacts on them in multiple aspects of their life and development and so teaching under 3s and understanding them is a vital, vast and complicated task that you really need to study as if you had to find it all for yourself you’d be lost and those children would be left for the worse as we have seen in the past when under 3s were not respected as people and those who they were handed to, not trained to care for them.    

How we got here and what happened before we did.

The colonisation of Aotearoa & Te Waka o Aoraki in the 19th century that formed New Zealand brought with it Britain’s industrial family model (Walker, 2016) and the economic and social pressures that destabilise the extended family (Johnston; & Deisher, 1973) along with laws that penalised the indigenous methods of communal childcare (Milne, 2017) and stigmatised solo mothers (May, 2013), in this environment many children became unwanted or their parents left without the means or support to care from them. Without an understanding of the value of trained educators and carers for under 3s, the system of baby farms developed. Baby-farming describes a practice where a “nurse” would take babies and look after them without disclosing their parents, for profit (May, 2013, p. 123). Overtime this practice attracted individuals interested in the money not the care of children, and with no awareness in colonial society of the needs of infants, their rights or the need to take seriously childcare, a blind eye was turned to these baby-farmers or the wellbeing of infants. Even after the discovery of mass graves, infanticide, abuse, neglect and scandals such as the trial of Minnie Dean, colonial New Zealand was more concerned with the immortality than the wellbeing of infants or the effects of poor treatment on their long term success and wellbeing (May, 2013), the eventual establishment of the kindergarten system in the late 1800s by these concerns was able to slowly developed into the ECE systems of today through the struggle of ECE kaiako and academics to fight for the credibility, scientific access and training required to centre children’s learning and create a system under which under 3s can be recognised as what they are, capable and in need for support, care, love and opportunities to learn (Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga | Ministry of Education., 2017).  

Assimilationist practices in imposing whiteness, English language and the a culture of secularised Anglicanism on children persists from that harsh colonial period into even today, which the national standards and code of conduct for all teachers (Education Council | Matatū Aotearoa, 2017) recognises by requiring that Māori learners be affirmed as Māori and all learners have their home cultures, identities and heritage affirmed and upheld. This is also a right under the UN rights of the Child (United Nations, 1989). Through this we can see the importance of trained kaiako with an understanding of the rights and identities of under 3s in caring for them. Te Whāriki (Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga | Ministry of Education., 2017) provides a foundation, and certificates & diplomas the theorical grounding and understanding for kaiako to meet these requirements and prevent the historical wrongs against under 3s be repeated by accident or ignorance against the under 3s of today.

These requirements, combined with the training ensure that kaiako today are qualified. Not just that that they know how to best meet the needs of children and enhance their learning, not just that they know what harms and hinders children so to avoided, not just that they know how to assess, see and recognise learning and build upon it to aid the child in building their identity, but that by being qualified, certified and trained the rest of society knows they know it too. The qualification is a sign of gained knowledge and also of vetting, police checks and experience, in study and placement that ensures that kaiako going to to teach, are safe to be going out to teach and anyone leaving their children with them, can check that. It’s not just important that kaiako are trained for the learning of children, but to everyone involved with children. In keeping under 3s cared for, supporting their growth and identities and in making sure, in a way the government, schools, parents and society can keep track of, that the type of neglect and harm that was once common in New Zealand is not happening and does not happen.

In all this report has been about one issue, the one that unites all these points and his questions, why is the study of children under 3 so important. It’s because children under 3 are important. Their care, their development, their families, their safety, and their futures. We need kaiako who are qualified, so we know our children are safe. We need kaiako who are up to date with the research, so we know our children are given the best support in developing into who they choose to be. We need kaiako who know the past, so we won’t repeat the worse of it as we chart a path to the future. We need kaiako who understand methods and practices, so they provide the best care for our children and their wellbeing. We need kaiako who have experience in practice before they take on the responsibility of teaching. We need kaiako who understand that under 3s are capable, and confident people with the full rights of personhood and kaiako who have been taught how to fight for those children, their rights and their education. If we didn’t have courses, papers and degrees to study education, we could end up again in a world where the people with so little regard for under 3s they’d ask those first dismissive questions response for the care of under 3s, what sort of outcomes could those attitudes bring?     

Bibliography  

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