Childhood Undergrounds: Power, Resistance, Secrets, Objects, and Subversion in Early Childhood Education

• In Event: Excellence in Education Research: Early-Career Scholars and Their Work

Abstract

A famous quote from Rose (1999), claiming that children and their childhoods are “the most intensively governed sector of personal existence” (p. 123), foregrounds this poster presentation. The dominant neoliberal ideology governs childhoods in contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand and positions the child as a competitive, individualistic consumer subject. The early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki, resists this by positioning the child as a biculturally aware, relational, non-materialist, collectivist subject. Both discourses exercise forms of governmentality, albeit in very different ways, but produce very different kinds of subjects. The specific bicultural agenda of Te Whāriki has, however, been largely subverted by the impacts of neoliberalism and neo-colonialism. May (2014), for instance, notes that the statistics … reveal that not all children are beneficiaries of past policy initiatives. Government policy has classified some of these children as potentially ‘vulnerable’; a ‘risk’ to society and a ‘priority’ for ECEC. (p. 154)

This poster presentation follows a multi-disciplinary analysis of an ethnographic study conducted in multiple urban early childhood settings in Aotearoa New Zealand, and aims to rupture the notions of one kind of intensive governance of children, which Rose refers to. This is conducted in this study by challenging and unsettling contemporary early childhood ‘business as usual’ in Aotearoa New Zealand, offering a glimpse into a childhood underground, a place where the key concepts of a childhood studies lens—agency, participation and power—are performed and perhaps offer glimpses of hope in their resistance of the system and governance. While they may be referred to as ‘childish’ subcultures, their ability to crack the veneer of the dominant ‘adult’ culture offers a space of resistance that can potentially reach beyond the child and childhoods. And as this poster points out, childhoods are governed, but children can resist this governance in their educational settings, albeit through different means.

Author

• Marek Tesar, The University of Auckland