Neoliberalism and Early Childhood Education

Markets, Imaginaries and Governance

Guy Roberts-Holmes, Peter Moss

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367140823
• eBook ISBN: 9780429638749
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

Neoliberalism, with its worldview of competition, choice and calculation, its economisation of everything, and its will to govern has 'sunk its roots deep' into Early Childhood Education and Care. This book considers its deeply detrimental impacts upon young children, families, settings and the workforce. Through an exploration of possibilities for resistance and refusal, and reflection on the significance of the coronavirus pandemic, Roberts-Holmes and Moss provide hope that neoliberalism's current hegemony can be successfully contested.

The book provides a critical introduction to neoliberalism and three closely related and influential concepts – Human Capital theory, Public Choice theory and New Public Management – as well as an overview of the impact of neoliberalism on compulsory education, in particular through the Global Education Reform Movement. With its main focus on Early Childhood Education and Care, this book argues that while neoliberalism is a very powerful force, it is 'deeply problematic, eminently resistible and eventually replaceable' – and that there are indeed alternatives.

Neoliberalism and Early Childhood Education is an insightful supplement to the studies of students and researchers in Early Childhood Education and Sociology of Education, and is also highly relevant to policy makers.

1

Neoliberalism’s moment

There’s a lot of talk in early childhood education and care (ECEC) today about ‘outcomes’ and ‘quality’, ‘testing’ and ‘assessment’, ‘interventions’ and ‘programmes’, ‘evidence-based’ and ‘best practice’, ‘investment’ and ‘human capital’, ‘preparation’ and ‘readyness’, ‘markets and marketing’. But why do we talk like this about ECEC, in such technical, instrumental and economistic terms? Why have we come to accept such language so unquestioningly as the normal and obvious way to discuss the education of young children? What are the consequences of this language and the thinking behind it? What is going on?

Our attempt to answer these questions is the subject of this book. In a nutshell, we contend that, like so much else in our lives, ECEC has over the last 40 or so years been drawn into the gravitational field of a powerful force, a political ideology that has become increasingly influential across the world since the 1980s: the ideology of neoliberalism. The way we talk so often today about young children and services for them is the language of neoliberalism. This book is an exploration of how neoliberalism, with its distinctive worldview and signature, has not only ‘sunk its roots deep into everyday life’ (Mirowski, 2013a, p. 28) but also into ECEC; of how it has come to influence the ways in which we think about, talk about and do ECEC with, in Margaret Sims’s words, ‘a devastating impact on the early childhood sector with its focus on standardisation, push-down curriculum and its positioning of children as investments for future economic productivity’ (Sims, 2017, p. 1).

To propose a relationship between neoliberalism and education is not, as we shall see, original; much has been written about the deep penetration of neoliberalism into this field. Most of this work, though, has focused on compulsory and higher education, neoliberalism in the school and the university. Some, too, have acknowledged neoliberalism’s implication in ECEC, but less has been written on this subject. We aim, therefore, to go more deeply and more broadly into neoliberalism and its impact on the early childhood sector, to make the existence and effects of this ideology more visible, more believable, and in doing so to emphasise the significance of the political and economic for early childhood education.

This is a book of exploration, but as we explore and, hopefully, show more clearly the neoliberal environment and the way it governs and shapes contemporary early childhood education and care, we also want to avoid some traps. One of these traps is reductionism, to end up implying everything is determined by one cause, in this case neoliberalism. There are, of course, other forces and influences bearing on early childhood services, and these will vary from place to place. Moreover, while the influence of neoliberalism is pervasive, how far it has sunk its roots also varies from place to place; as Stephen Ball observes in his foreword to this book, neoliberalism ‘migrates and is selectively taken up in diverse political contexts. It inserts itself differently into different local settings’. Another trap is to treat neoliberalism itself as a homogeneous thing: it may have ‘become omnipresent but it is a complex, mediated and heterogeneous kind of omnipresence, not a state of blanket uniformity’ (Mirowski, 2013a, p. 52). So those who subscribe to neoliberalism will not all sing from exactly the same hymn sheet, context and culture always having a part to play.

Last but not least, while we want to argue that neoliberalism is a very powerful force, impacting on ECEC in substantial and varied ways, and while we agree with Margaret Sims’s assessment that ‘[n]eoliberalism has become so entrenched in our thinking that for many, there is no alternative: it is simply the way the world operates’ (Sims, 2017, pp. 1, 2), we do not want to treat it as all powerful, an irresistible and inevitable force, ‘a kind of biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution (Monbiot, 2017, p. 31)’, before which all must submit and to which ‘there is no alternative’ – a refrain much used by Margaret Thatcher, the former British Prime Minister who, as we shall see, played an important part in establishing neoliberalism as a dominant ideology. This, Joan Tronto argues, is a trap into which it is easy to fall:

Many articles and books have been written that see neoliberalism as a problematic way to organise human societies.… Yet, the main response of scholars to neoliberalism has been either to treat it as the new normal or to think of it as invincible. Among the first group, what is surprising is that scholars continue to accept this state of affairs rather than to react against it

(Tronto, 2017, p. 27)

Neoliberalism is certainly a powerful force and it has a big impact. But it is, as we shall discuss, resistible and is resisted. There are alternatives in theory and in practice. Nor is neoliberalism dominant and invincible in perpetuity. Indeed, arguably neoliberalism has at least peaked and may be starting to enter the phase of decline and fall: as the newspaper columnist John Harris observes, ‘a great deal of the free-market, laissez-faire ideas that have dominated the last four decades [are] being criticised and contested, perhaps as never before’ (Harris, 2018). While economist Kate Raworth argues that

putting blind faith in markets – while ignoring the living world, society, and the runaway power of banks – has taken us to the brink of ecological, social and financial collapse. It is time for the neoliberal show to leave the stage: a very different story is emerging.

(Raworth, 2017, p. 61)

It is important, though, to keep this talk of decline in perspective. For neoliberalism is by now deeply entrenched – it has ‘become part of the mental furniture of the political elite’ (Marquand, 2004, p. 118) – and reluctant to relinquish its leading role. Despite being subject to increasing criticism and scepticism, despite being seriously undermined by the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath, neoliberalism has shown itself to be resilient, revealing considerable powers of recovery. It is far from finished.

One reason for this staying power is the failure of critics to develop and clearly articulate alternatives to neoliberalism: to not only argue another world is possible but to provide convincing and detailed accounts of what that world might be like and how we might get from here to there. The moral is clear. It is more important than ever for work to be undertaken on developing new ideas, for example about ECEC, and new policies to enact those ideas. The last thing we need now is to throw our hands up in despair, when so much needs to be done and can be done to prepare for post-neoliberalism.

The focus of this book is neoliberalism and early childhood education and care. But before homing in on this stage of education, we think it useful to review and reflect on some of the considerable body of work that has been done on neoliberalism and the wider world of education, in particular in primary and secondary schooling, some of which will certainly resonate with those in the field of early childhood. That is the theme of Chapter 2.

Competition, choice and calculation are central themes of neoliberalism, and these operate through the medium of the market and transactions in it between buyers and sellers. So, in Chapter 3, we examine how neoliberalism’s belief in this mechanism has been enacted in ECEC and the place of the market in the delivery of services for young children; we consider, too, what evidence there is about the consequences of delivering early childhood services in this way. In Chapter 4 we consider neoliberalism’s imaginary of ECEC: the images of the child, the parent, the early childhood centre and the early childhood worker, as seen through the neoliberal lens, and how these images are productive of the subjectivities or identities of these individuals and institutions. Then in Chapter 5 we turn to the governing of ECEC under neoliberalism, in particular how it is intensively controlled through the principles and techniques of new public management.

In these three chapters, our focus is on neoliberalism and how its ideas have been brought into and applied to early childhood education and care. Our focus is critical, but the focus nevertheless is on this particular perspective or worldview, and its consequences, including whether it seems to work in its own terms – does it do what it says on the tin? This focus does not mean that we think neoliberalism normal, invincible or, indeed, desirable. On the contrary, we view neoliberalism as deeply problematic, eminently resistible and eventually replaceable. In the final chapter, therefore, we go further into why we think neoliberalism has little or no future and turn to alternatives; for if the neoliberal mantra has been ‘there are no alternatives’, ours is ‘there are alternatives’. We adopt a hopeful note (at least for those who, like us, find neoliberalism unpalatable), arguing that this worldview, so powerful for the last 30 years, is faced by growing scepticism and disenchantment, and entering an inevitable period of decline and fall – and that now is the time to develop and propagate different ways of thinking, talking and doing ECEC. The danger facing neoliberalism is, in Michel Foucault’s words, that ‘as soon as one can no longer think things as one formerly thought them, transformation becomes both very urgent, very difficult, and quite possible’ (Foucault, 1988a, p. 155).

That was where we originally intended to finish. But just as we were ready to send this book to the publisher, the world was struck by a global pandemic, impacting on the lives of everyone. While it is too soon to comprehend the full impact and future consequences of Covid-19, we felt the need to acknowledge its significance to our narrative, so have added a last minute ‘pandemic postscript’. One of the themes of this postscript chimes with Chapter 6: after the pandemic passes, do we go back to where we were before, to a continuation of neoliberalism, or will our current experience provide an impetus, a desire, a determination to pursue alternatives in a world where thinking differently is not only a possibility but a necessity?

But first we turn in this chapter to offer a short introduction to neoliberalism – what it is, how it has emerged as such a powerful force in the world today, and what have been some of its main effects on that world. We finish the chapter by introducing three important concepts that are closely related to neoliberalism: human capital, public choice and new public management.

What is neoliberalism?

Before seeking to answer the question ‘What is neoliberalism?’, we should first acknowledge that it is a contentious term ‘that has attracted a remarkable degree of frustration and fury, in politics, the media and within academia’ (Davies, 2016), being dismissed by some as vacuous or useless or a delusion that does not really exist. Others still write it off ‘as a boo-word signifying only the users’ opposition to capitalism’ (Barnett, 2020, np). For many more, the term is either unknown or meaningless. As Philip Mirowski puts it, ‘even at this late hour, the world is still full of people who believe neoliberalism doesn’t really exist’ (Mirowski, 2013a, p. 28). While for George Monbiot, neoliberalism has ‘become almost invisible to us: we cannot stand far enough back to see it (Monbiot, 2017, p. 29). It might be said that neoliberalism hides itself in full view, ‘almost to the point of passing as the “ideology of no ideology”’ (Mirowski, 2013a, p. 28).

We disagree with those who dismiss neoliberalism as vacuous, useless or a delusion, siding with the many writers who have argued that the term describes a meaningful body of thought and action propagated by what Mirowski (2014, p. 2) terms ‘a thought collective and political movement combined’ that has come to operate and exert influence on a global scale. Far from being a ‘boo-word’, the term neoliberalism ‘is essential for an understanding of where we have got to’, including ‘why there has been such a stand-out failure by the US and Britain in their responses to the coronavirus’ (Barnett, 2020). David Harvey, in his book ‘A Brief History of Neoliberalism’, argues that neoliberalism has, in fact, had ‘pervasive effects on [our] ways of thought to the point where it has become incorporated into the common-sense way many of us interpret, live in, and understand the world’ (2005, p. 3); while Monbiot describes ‘a vicious ideology of extreme competition and individualism that pits us against each other, and weakens the social bonds that make our lives worth living…[and that] has seeped into our language, our understanding of the choices we face and our conception of ourselves’ (2017, pp. 29–30). Most people today may not be able to name or describe neoliberalism, which ‘contributes to its influence and success – just try to oppose something that you cannot name’ (Barnett, 2020, np). Yet most people, also, recognise its signs and symptoms, including an increasingly competitive, individualised, unequal and insecure world. By making neoliberalism and its effects visible, by naming and describing it, by revealing its presence in the full light of day, it can be seen to be neither a neutral force or a biological law – but the consequential result of human choices and actions, and therefore contestable and changeable.

So, if we argue there is such a thing as neoliberalism, what is it? Neoliberalism has been variously described as a ‘theory of everything’ (Mirowski, 2013a, p. 23); ‘a hegemonic ideology’ (Gormley, 2018, p. 4) and a ‘political ideology, a set of ideas that offer a coherent view about how society should be ordered’ (Tronto, 2017, p. 29); ‘an intellectual and political movement for concrete social and economic change’; and a successful narrative or story (Monbiot, 2016a; Raworth, 2017), that ‘like many successful political narratives, provides not only a set of economic or political ideas, but also an account of who we are and how we behave’ (Monbiot, 2017, p. 30). It can also be understood as what the French philosopher Michel Foucault calls a ‘dominant discourse’. ‘Dominant discourses’ are narratives or stories that have a decisive influence on a particular subject, by insisting that they are the only way to think, talk and behave, that they are the only reality, that they represent the Truth.

Such discourses seek to impose, in Foucault’s words, a ‘regime of truth’. They do this by exercising power over our thoughts and actions, directing or governing how we construct the world or weave reality and, therefore, what we see as ‘the truth’. Typical of dominant discourses is how they make ‘assumptions and values invisible, turn subjective perspectives and understandings into apparently objective truths, and determine that some things are self-ev...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword by Michel Vandenbroeck
• Preface by Stephen J. Ball
• 1. Neoliberalism’s moment
• 2. Neoliberalism and the wider world of education
• 3. Neoliberalism and markets
• 4. Neoliberalism and its imaginary
• 5. Neoliberalism and governance
• 6. Resistance, crises and transformation
• A pandemic postscript
• References
• Index