KEEP YOUR POLITICALLY CORRECT HANDS OFF OUR CHILDREN

27-April-2009

“Our job as policymakers is to ensure young children have access to a calm, stimulating environment run by professionals.” – Maxine McKew, Opinion Piece in SMH 23 November 2008.

The comments above by Labor’s Parliamentary Secretary for Early Childhood Education & Childcare Maxine McKew might seem innocuous enough – it’s very fashionable to be an advocate for the “professionalisation” of care these days. The Rudd Government is forging ahead with its plan to ensure a much higher-qualified childcare workforce and a National Curriculum for Learning to be set down by the Government and implemented on babies before they even push their chubby fingers into their first birthday cake.

Maxine is keen on quoting academics who declare that “babies come out of the womb ready to learn”. A statement that is patently true. But the question is, who should be deciding what and how our youngest babies learn? Academics? The Government? 20-year olds with a University degree?

One thing seems to be largely missing in the debate – the role of parents as primary carers and educators.

Alarm bells should have started ringing last November when The Early Year’s Learning Framework , Labor’s National Learning Curriculum for under 5’s, was first released.

This draft document was full of incomprehensible, bureaucratic jargon which seemed to be aimed at intimidating parents into thinking that they are not capable of raising their own children. If you can’t understand this, then how can you provide an acceptable level of care for your most precious possession?

It did, however, provide insight into what the Government’s actual intentions are – to develop some sort of politically correct, social engineering exercise rather than a genuine attempt to provide a framework for the best possible nurture of children in a safe and stimulating environment.

Mothers, fathers and teachers would have been fascinated to learn that, in relation to their children’s early education, the draft framework stated that:

• Reflection includes identifying and investigating teaching and learning practice and issues associated with power, control and social justice. Events can be ‘pulled to pieces’ (that is, deconstructed) to see all aspects involved, which will help educators examine the conditions or context of an event or experience;
• or that the intent of the Framework is to advocate the use of diverse theoretical perspectives in planning for and guiding children’s learning, and in reflecting critically on curriculum decisions;

Somehow, as Mums and Dads sit down together for dinner and discuss the day’s events, I doubt that “diverse theoretical perspectives” will be at the top of dinner-table discussion. Yet they will be instinctively guiding their children’s learning, motivated as they are by love and a burning desire to give their young children the best possible start in life.

The outrage was not surprising when this week the Government’s latest offering, entitled, Belonging, Being and Becoming – an Early Years Learning Framework for Australia made headlines. Rather than a far reaching plan for the future early education of our young children it appears to be more of “How To Guide “ on making your baby a good little political warrior rather than a happy, well adjusted and resilient child.

The Framework states that, “the early childhood years are a time when children are developing understandings of community and citizenship and learning about democracy and the rights and responsibilities of citizens”. Yes, but how does that extrapolate to the sandpit? What “rights and responsibilities” as citizens are 2 year olds to understand?

I certainly hope that when my own nine month old baby eventually attends pre-school that her teacher is not relying on “poststructuralist theories that offer insights into issues of power, equity and social justice in early childhood settings.” They may be issues that I have to deal with as a Member of Parliament, but not ones that she has to deal with as a toddler.

Australian parents and early learning childhood teachers should be concerned about the Rudd Government’s bizarre attempt to foist political correctness on the youngest of all Australians. Values and beliefs ought to be instilled within the loving environment of a family – they are taught in everyday actions and by example.

The danger comes when the Government, through the guise of a “Learning Framework” tires to impose their own issues or concerns on our blissfully unaware youngsters. There is enough political correctness and blatant bias in the education sector – particularly in our Universities, as evidence provided to a recent Parliamentary Enquiry outlined.

As a new parent myself, I am no different from the many Australian parents who have expressed concern at the scope and reach of this Framework - which is clearly designed to indoctrinate our youngest Australians as they begin their path through the all-important early childhood years.

As parents, we must ensure that we do not relinquish our right to care for and educate our children according to our values and beliefs. We must not be intimidated by the ongoing narrative of Ms McKew and some academics that “quality care” is only provided by “professionals” who work to an agenda set out by the Government.