Playing the Ruins: The Philosophy of Care in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

A recent ‘strategic initiative’ literature review developed for the Aotearoa/New Zealand Ministry of Education advised that care and education are no longer distinct. This article explores this suggestion in terms of the politics and the philosophy of early childhood education. It argues that the synthesis of care and education reflects an economy of ‘expert’ knowledge in which care is increasingly subject to an educational regulatory gaze. While the influence of a sociocultural perspective in early childhood education research and practice engenders a sense of acknowledging the margins, this article argues that the margins have very little say with regards to what constitutes caring and educating practices. The synthesis of care and education legitimates increased state regulation of early education, and reflects a contemporary will to iron out social seams (engendering the seamless society). This article argues that the conflation of education and care troubles truth regimes that have, in Aotearoa/New Zealand and elsewhere, governed practices of caring for the child during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Hence, care is a concept in ruins.