Whose Home? Problematizing the Nature of "Homelike" in Early Childhood Education

• In Event: Unpacking “Home”: Confronting Racism and Other Oppressions in Early Childhood Contexts

Abstract

Many early childhood educators speak to the goal of making EC centers ‘homelike.’(Cadence Education, 2021). Presumably, this invocation of home is intended to conjure warmth, safety and familiarity. The conjectured hope is that children will feel as comfortable in school as they are at home. But several problematic assumptions are embedded in this metaphor of home. First, it posits a homogenized home, as though all children’s homes are the same, and therefore that the same kinds of structures and policies will make all children feel ‘at home.’

The ways in which “home” is conceptualized is often based on a White, middle-class image of what home is or should be (Farago, 2017). The physical design of the ECE center, what is in the play area —- and even the pretend foods for the “housekeeping corner” — represent a narrow vision of what homes are or should be. What is the experience of children for whom the learning environment bears little resemblance to their own home, culture or life experiences. And what do all children (including those who hold privileged, majoritized identities) learn about cultural, racial and class differences when the idealized “home” does not reflect their classmates’ experiences?

Secondly, for some children, their home is not a place of love or safety. Some children experience domestic violence, abuse and neglect in their homes. Perhaps, in those situations, our goal might need to be making the EC Centre very different from their home rather than a reflection of it. This chapter problematizes descriptions of early childhood environments as homelike, bringing to bear understandings of the visibility/invisibility of differences and conceptions of safety (Sapon-Shevin, 2017).

The paper also seeks to interrogate often-spoken narratives about “appreciating” or “celebrating” differences as a goal for education; the author seeks a more nuanced distinction between differences that should be celebrated (different kinds of living arrangements and foods) from those differences that should not be celebrated but should be addressed and remediated (children who are un-housed or hungry). A social justice perspective demands that our understandings of diversity and our responses to inequities and injustices be fully unpacked with teachers and students as we strive for a more equitable society.

Author

• Mara Sapon-Shevin, Syracuse University