Poverty and Equality in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

[Abstract] In Spain, as in the rest of Europe and the world, families fall victim to the injustices of a global capitalist system that is founded on social Darwinism. The financial problems experienced by families as a result of structural unemployment and/or unstable employment undermine their well-being and their ability to meet their most basic needs. Often, the neoliberal policies supposedly designed to alleviate recessionary suffering have divided the poor and set communities against each other in the scramble for ever more limited financial supports. In public education, underprivileged children from different social groups find themselves at greater risk of conflict owing to competition between families for financial assistance from public and private institutions, thus fuelling economic racism and negative stereotypes among the poor themselves. The effect of this is to mask the fallout of a perverse economic system of unrestrained waste and consumerism, in which subjects are simultaneously deprived of the means to achieve their materialistic ambitions (Klein, 1999; Kravets & Maclaran, 2018; Sánchez-Blanco, 2018). These tensions are merely a smokescreen, however, used to deflect attention and debate away from the real problem: the threat posed by the increasing socialization of children in the ethos of market consumerism, and the worsening situation of economic inequality and injustice among them (Macrine et al., 2010; Shor, 1996; Steinberg, 2011). When young children bring objects of their own to school, a situation of exclusion and economic discrimination can be the result. It is vital, therefore, that schools pull together in the initial stages of education to guard against the construction of economistic subjectivities from the earliest years of childhood. Early childhood education requires critical pedagogical projects committed to social change and the development of critical thought and practice among young children and teachers (Agnello & Reynolds, 2016). Poor children deserve to have their stories heard, as does anybody who has known hardship and deprivation in their lives. Creating a debate in schools around their experience would help to alleviate the intense distress associated with the ‘derivative fear', vulnerability and insecurity described by Bauman (2006) of a population living under the constant threat of dire poverty or, at a minimum, exclusion from consumption.