Public Intellectualism and Resistance With Very Young Children

• In Event: Creating Space for Academics Through the Project of Public Intellectualism as Public Engagement

Abstract

Objectives: This paper engages with a recent research project on how pubic intellectualism with very young children enhances the possibilities for resistance to dominant discourses and structures in the local and global environment.

Perspectives: At the centre of this presentation are very young children and how they have conducted resistance and became part of alternative children’s educational governance boards. Power and subjectivities are essential aspects of the early years classroom. Foucault's and Havel's philosophical work on power and the production of subjectivities in the early years classroom is used as a theoretical lens to argue that childhood subjectivities are produced under the complex ideological umbrellas of governing rationalities, through tensions between the multiple, diverse, ever-changing, and competing discourses in the early years classroom. Through this examination, power relations are exposed, and the production of childhood subjectivities within the early years classroom is reconceptualized as those of victims, supporters, and rebels.

Methods and Data Sources: These events are analyzed through the Foucauldian and Havelian notions how ‘the child’ in early years settings is produced in relation to local and global discourses, and how activism and theory is merged through a childhood studies lens.

I argue that Foucault's (1982, 2003) and Havel's (1985, 1989) work on power is relevant to children's centrality in power relations within early years classrooms. Everyone, every child, is part of the system, even if they are on the fringes of the early years classroom society or seen and portrayed by the traditional models of power as powerless. In the early years classroom, all children are both the victims and the pillars of the system and of the wider early years educational order, as they struggle with and at the same time support the policies and requirements of early years settings. However, the early years system does not publicly reveal this struggle, and instead presents itself with a public facade of being caring, supportive, and democratic.

Conclusions and Significance: Foucault's and Havel's critiques of society, transposed into early years settings, challenge the official perception of a beautiful, happy, peaceful facade of childhood by exposing the ruthless and selective power that structures it. The early years classroom system regulates and thrives on the power exerted in governing all children in the early years classroom space, however, as this paper demonstrates, there are public intellectual practices that allow young children to become activists.

Authors

• Marek Tesar, The University of Auckland

• Casey Y Myers, Kent State University - Kent