This chapter on the wider, global context of debates about early childhood education and care opens the book and is intended to set its tone. It originated as a paper for a special issue of a journal, Global Social Policy, which critiqued the Sustainable Development G oals (SDGs) (Penn 2017). It was then discussed at a workshop in February 2017 organized by the Norwegian Centre for Child Research for the contributors to this book, and as a result it has been rewritten and modified to take account of the views expressed in the workshop. It prefigures the concerns and issues of the contributors and tries to link the chapters into a coherent and convincing picture of the dilemmas—ethical, theoretical, political, economic and methodological—which confront those working in the field of early childhood in a development context.
The Limitations of Global Discourses on Development Aid
Global discourses about development aid range from highly critical to self-congratulationary. Hickel (2017) argues that the development narrative of giving charitable aid to the poor is itself the reverse of the truth. Development aid is intended to help poor countries step up their development by suitable advice, technical expertise and an interim helping hand; given this assistance they will reach the same levels of development as richer countries. Recent economic data from the highly respected organization Global Financial Integrity (Kar and Schjelderup 2016) suggests otherwise. It shows that for every $1 given in aid, $24 is extracted in terms of resources, patents, trade deals and various kinds of money manipulation. In general, the poor can only get poorer, relative to the rich. In the light of these figures, aid is more aptly described as a convenient cover for the gross exploitation of poor countries. The problem is not the inadequacies of poor countries, but the exceedingly unfair world in which they have to operate; the problem lies with the manipulative financial practices of rich countries not in the failings of the poor.
These figures offer a powerful perspective on the aid narrative. But there has long been some awareness of the magnitude of the economic and political complexities involved in addressing issues of global development. David Hulme’s (2016) recent book on global poverty, for instance, enumerates some of the deeply challenging issues facing reformers, and concludes that ‘Context is king’. He emphasizes the nuances and importance of local knowledge and histories in shaping any development processes, and argues against global prescriptions and crude outcome measures. Most critics point to the overwhelming inequality between rich and poor, within countries and between countries (Hulme 2016; Illingworth et al. 2011; Stiglitz 2012). Pogge (2015) claims that UNDP figures which show a reduction in global poverty are illusory, since the criteria for measuring poverty were changed halfway through the period of measurement. Hickel (2017), using more recent figures, confirms and expands this analysis. James C Scott (2012), the Yale political scientist, goes even further and describes democracy without relative equity ‘a hoax’.
By contrast, most international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) and international finance institutions (IFIs), which deliver aid programs to try to combat global poverty, tend to offer relentlessly upbeat promises about what they can provide and what a difference their effort will make. Increasingly, the solutions put forward by big INGOs are technocratic to improve the quality of the processes of government and, through education and other means, reshape the behavior of people in poor or failing countries. This is how they believe countries will improve their economic position. These technocratic solutions involve the circulation of well-worn ideas between agencies, and high-level agency interaction, rather than the sponsorship of carefully evaluated local project work. The websites of the big agencies portray early childhood in remarkably similar ways, and their work overlaps so much as to be indistinguishable (Penn 2011). Children are the raw material that the technocrats can work upon, to improve their viability, their resilience and their subsequent performance as working adults.
A recent example is the World Health Organization (WHO) International Child Development Steering Group (ICDSG) series in the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet . It is entitled Advancing Early Childhood Development: From Science to Scale. The various authors point out that millions of children are placed at risk of premature death, developmental disability or pathology by conditions that could be changed for the better early in their lives. Therefore, resources should be channeled into such interventions since the payoff is greater than seeking to correct developmental consequences of early disadvantage at later stages of life:
This Series considers new scientific evidence for interventions, building on the findings and recommendations of previous Lancet Series on child development (2007, 2011), and proposes pathways for implementation of early childhood development at scale. The Series emphasises ‘nurturing care’, especially of children below three years of age, and multi-sectoral interventions starting with health, which can have wide reach to families and young children through health and nutrition.
The aim of reducing child suffering and improving child health is wholly admirable. But the assumption that someone from the outside has to intervene with a detailed, targeted, technocratic program, and that the application of this program will somehow change the balance between poor and rich countries, and enable poor countries to perform better in the long term, is an absurdity in the light of the economic figures. Moreover, the technical program is itself suspect. Serpell points out in his chapter, that the Lancet program ‘exaggerates the degree of consensus within the scientific community in order to convince lay audiences and funding agencies that science has come up with a definitive solution to early childhood education’. The technocratic basis of the Lancet programme (basically home visiting ‘stimulation’ and nutrition programs for very young children, and some kind of center-based provision for slightly older ones, in programs led by health agencies) is dubious. It ignores the 30 or so years of work of organizations like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on the nature of early childhood provision, how to plan for and organize it, and on the content of programs, presumably because the experiences and standards of rich countries are not considered as a relevant goal for poor countries. But even more than narrowness of information, the Lancet program assumes that the mothers and children they are working with are a blank canvas. The views of mothers and others, and their cultural practices, are of no consequence; they are not mentioned in any of the papers. The eminent psychologist Jerome Bruner argues that ‘There is nothing in the world to match child-rearing for the depth and complexity of the challenges it poses for those directly caught up in its daily intricacies and for the society to which the child and caretakers belong’ (2000: ix). This is not a view considered by the Lancet authors.
The Millennium Development Goals were an attempt by the development community to focus global attention and raise money to address the suffering of the poor, albeit within existing paradigms of technocratic aid. There is considerable debate about whether these goals were anywhere near met, especially the goal of poverty reduction, given that the measurement criteria, already contested, were changed halfway through the monitoring process. There was some recognition of the inadequacy of these goals, and they have now been replaced by the SDGs . These too have shortcomings. A team from the Overseas Development Institute analyzed one subgoal in each of the 17 SDGs . According to current economic trends, a small proportion will be halfway met by 2030 if nothing changes (SDGs 1, 8, 15); a larger proportion will only be achieved with significant new effort (SDGs 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 16, 17); and there are a few intractable goals (10, 11, 12, 13, 14), for which policy across the world, in rich and poor countries alike, must be completely rethought and transformed if the situation is not to get worse (Nicolai et al. 2015).
SDG 4.2. Early Child Development, Care and Pre-primary Education
The early childhood development lobby has now re-orientated itself around the subgoal 4.2: by 2030 to ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education.
When the UN opened up the process of consultation over the SDGs, as with other goals, subgoal 4.2 was subject to intense lobbying. In the UK, for example, Tessa Jowell, a Blairite ex-Labour MP, with an experience of welfare issues but relatively little experience of development issues, was the public face of an online international petition for childcare and early education to be included in the SDGs. This petition was widely circulated, and culminated in a meeting with other lobbyists in New York:
At an event on early childhood development at the UN, hosted by the Permanent Missions of Colombia, Ecuador and Italy, and sponsored by the Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and Development, Open Society Foundations, SOS Children's Villages and CINDE, [a] crucial baseline for success was re-emphasised. The event gave us all the sense that it is possible to achieve a holistic agenda for early childhood and scale up with quality in all countries around the world. (Jowell 2014)
Other voluntary organizations issued documents in preparation for, or commenting on the likely impact of SDG 4.2. Enthusiasts for 4.2. included a diverse and worldwide group of activists/INGOs. The Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and Development (CGECCD), which has long claimed to be a voice for the sector, but which has been almost entirely North American in its orientation and in its use of references, also prepared a booklet for the SDG debate. It has argued for ‘equity in childcare’. Its definition of equity, adopted from the World Bank, is parsimonious: ‘Equity and equality are related but distinct concepts: equity focuses on the process of ensuring a fair distribution of goods and services, whereas equality is about the final outcomes between different individuals’ (2016: 14).
CGECCD wants to see a more equitable access to early childhood provision, and more equal opportunities, but without history or context; there is no analysis of how inequitable situations might have arisen or how they might be addressed. There is no wider discussion in the booklet about post-colonial tensions, structural inequality, accountability or any of the wider obstacles that anyone promoting the issues might face. In this account, an organization that provides some kind of service for young children is per se undertaking an equitable act, whatever the origins and mode of conduct of the organization and whatever the wider circumstances in which it operates. Intervention in early childhood is deemed to be so important in improving the life chances of any child that niceties of procedure and programming are overlooked.
The fact that so many activists in the field regard Early Childhood Education and Care/Early Child Development (ECEC/ECD) as a panacea which trumps almost all other actions to promote equality is mainly due to the work of the economist James Heckman a...