Abstract
Every action has consequences. Like a stone thrown into a pond, the ripples extend outward, often further and deeper than we can see. This is true whether it is policy, practices, or individual choices. In the case of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), many influential policies have been fueled by the highly competitive and accountability-driven Global Education Reform Movement (GERM). These have not been without consequences. Policies have an impact and lead to changes, some of them intended and others (un)intended, and many of these consequences are concerning and, frankly, unethical. As Diane Ravitch has pointed out: “The privatizers hail disruption and call it ‘creative,’ but it is neither creative nor beneficial” (2020: 8). Of course, policymakers and those in power always frame such policies in socially acceptable and appealing terms, and sometimes it may be indeed true that such policies translate into practice differently than intended, creating unintended consequences for children, teachers, or even society on a larger scale. Other times, however, such consequences are anticipated and welcomed by those in power to benefit them. These consequences often protect agendas that are not widely accepted, such as making a profit at the expense of families and children in need or shaping a generation by eroding ideals of democracy and equality. It is this type of consequence, with its duplicitous agenda, what we call an (un)intended consequence, that is the focus of this issue.
This special issue aims to explore in detail the consequences, both truly unintended and (un)intended, of current early childhood policies around the globe. One must ask who is benefiting, examine why such policies are created with which (hidden) agenda in mind, and consider how they translate into practice. While many involved in these so-called reforms have honorable motives, the reform movement, in general, has now become closely tied to profit motives. Besides, many organizations have shadowy motives and do not operate in good faith. Nevertheless, our profession, as well as families and society, often accept policies on their face, without analyzing the consequences and many layers of implications for those impacted. Will ECEC continue to accept the assault of stones being thrown into our pond, or can we somehow scrutinize the ripples that these stones create to recognize the far-reaching implications of such policies? Our introduction and this issue discuss the nature of ECEC policies in the context of GERM, with a specific focus on how such policies are unintended or (un)intended, as well as the implications for young children, teachers, the profession, and the larger global community.
ECEC and current GERM policies: The pond and the stones
The Global Education Reform Movement, or GERM, a term coined by Pasi Sahlberg (2011), describes a current trend in education that has resulted in an accountability-driven and outcomes-focused model (Biesta, 2013, 2015). In general, but also in the field of ECEC specifically, these consequences include standardization, narrowing the curriculum, high-stakes accountability, prescribed curriculum, increased control over teachers, attacks on teacher unions, de-professionalization, exploitation of workers, transfer of business models, school choice, and privatization (Nitecki and Wasmuth, 2019; Wasmuth and Nitecki, 2017). The standardization of teaching and learning is the result of an emphasis on specific learning outcomes that are “setting clear and sufficiently high-performance standards for schools, teachers, and students” (Sahlberg, 2016: 177). Besides, the tested areas of literacy and numeracy are predominantly and sometimes only seen as indicators of student success, thereby abandoning other subjects, such as science, social studies, the arts, and health education, and thus narrowing the curriculum. Test-based, high-stakes accountability dominates, as schools and teachers are evaluated based on their performance on standardized tests with clear consequences in the form of rewards and punishment. Such testing includes, most recently, the expansion of questionable standardized assessment tools and practices with young children (Urban, 2018, 2019). Although standardized testing is questioned in academia, it is the status quo and reality in schools. To avoid failure and punishment, schools resort to predetermined learning outcomes and prescribed curricula, which are “safe and low-risk ways to reach learning goals” (Sahlberg, 2016: 178). This has led to increased control over teachers, who are neither trusted nor granted professional autonomy, eroding their professionalization. This general distrust of the teaching profession is often accompanied by attacks on teachers’ unions, which are described as the enemy of students and only interested in maintaining benefits for their membership, thereby affecting the impact of unions, and ultimately, working conditions (Lafer, 2017; Ravitch, 2020).
To address these issues, GERM has borrowed analysis and solutions from the business world and applied them to the education of and living with young children. The current atmosphere is corporate, rather than educational, as reform ideas are not developed from within by considering unique characteristics of ECEC or the local community but are lent from the business world as a packaged solution to “fix” a school (Ravitch, 2020). Related to this corporate approach is the school choice and privatization movement, which outsources the provision of government services to independent operators under the guise of providing better choices for children’s education. Thus, education is no longer envisioned as a public good for all citizens, an essential part of a democratic society, but as a commodity to be sold in the marketplace to those who have the means and access. It is the idea that competition and market forces should dictate every corner of public life. While these policies originated in Western countries, they have long since rippled outward, affecting the organization, practice, and delivery of ECEC worldwide, as well as chipping away at the ideals of democracy and equality.
Who benefits from unintended and (un)intended consequences? The stone-throwers
While GERM policies and trends are worrisome, they are also seemingly unquestioned. However, it is important to ask who is benefiting. Who is throwing such stones into our pond—and why? Who are the supporters of such policies, the “disruptors,” as Diane Ravitch (2020) calls them, and what is their goal? To shed light on underlying and often hidden agendas, it is revealing to critically analyze the policies’ consequences and whose agenda is at work. Who is benefiting from these policies and changes to the educational landscape? As Ravitch asks: Years from now, historians will look back and wonder why so many very wealthy people spent so much money in a vain attempt to disrupt and privatize public education and why they ignored the income inequality and wealth inequality that were eating away at the vitals of American society. (2020: 51)
Thus, policies’ consequences fall into four categories: intentional; unintended and unanticipated; unintended with anticipated effects; and (un)intended, those with fully anticipated but masked outcomes. These consequences, like the ripple in the pond, can occur very close to the stone, or outward, affecting every level of the system: children, families, teachers, schools, the profession, society, and even our global community. In the following discussion, our understanding of these different types of consequences is outlined.
Consequences are, in principle, supposed to be intentional, meaning that a policy has a clear aim or focus to affect a group of people. Ideally, this is how policies are formulated and carried out. If the intended effect is indeed achieved, the policy’s implementation is considered successful—without considering whether an intended outcome is desirable for children or an education system in general, these being normative questions. For example, the policy of a compulsory schooling age has the intended consequence to expose all children, regardless of background or family situation, to formal education to become educated citizens. In a perfect world, all policies would have such transparent and intentional consequences.
Most policies, though, result in rippling effects outward, more than the ones initially intended. According to the law of unintended consequences, actions of people and especially of complex systems, such as governments or education systems, “always have effects that are unanticipated or ‘unintended’” (Norton, 2008). Such unintended and undesired consequences, or what Zhao calls “side effects in education” (2018), are unwelcome outcomes of a formal policy, unwanted or unexpected results that accompany the desired effect. These are consequences that are not written into policy but are the result of how the policy translates into practice. This is certainly true for a complex field such as education, which has multiple stakeholders and can result in unpredictable or unforeseen outcomes. While educational policies can be effective in achieving certain goals, they can simultaneously hinder the realization of other, equally or even more important, goals, and thereby do harm (Zhao, 2018). To a certain degree, unintended consequences are inevitable.
However, unintended consequences can either be anticipated or unanticipated (De Zwart, 2015). Both are different phenomena, as unintended but anticipated consequences follow from purposive choice, and it is important to be aware of such a distinction. Unanticipated consequences are the result of an oversight or misinformation which could have been prevented if the impacts, including the negative side effects, had been studied more carefully (Zhao, 2018). A major reason for their occurrence is that policymakers are mainly or only interested in the effectiveness of educational reforms while ignoring the possibility that they could also do harm or impact other areas that are not the focus of the reform. Education, however, is a complex system, there is no panacea, and negative side effects inevitably occur (Zhao, 2018). Careful policymakers should investigate and consider such negative side effects.
Unintended but anticipated consequences, however, are unwelcome side effects that were foreseen but traded-off against desired positive outcomes and developments, often framed as the price of doing business or explained away with a cost–benefit analysis. Contrary to unanticipated negative side effects, unintended but anticipated consequences cannot be excused by referring to the policymakers’ error, ignorance, or blindness (De Zwart, 2015). These are conscious decisions that are made with indifference to future harm or with the hope that the negative side effects won’t be too destructive. In reality, this second meaning of the term unintended consequences is presumably the more dominant phenomenon, even if the term is mainly understood as an unwelcome and unanticipated policy outcome (De Zwart, 2015). The separation line between the two, though, can be murky. Nevertheless, it would be naive to assume that policymakers are mostly unaware of such negative side effects.
The fourth type, (un)intended consequences, is the most sinister. These appear to be unintentional and inconvenient side effects of a policy, but are deliberate efforts by those in power to benefit them and their agenda, all while masking the ill effects. Hence, the term “(un)intended,” the “un” being offered as a public explanation but with no truth to it. These policies are often portrayed positively while the negative side effects are portrayed as unfortunate oversights because such policies, like vouchers, are often clearly opposed by the public (Lafer, 2017; Ravitch, 2020). Thus, such policies are often framed as reforms, even if the hidden agenda is destructive (MacLean, 2017). The aim is to achieve its ends essentially through trickery by deceiving trusting people, for example parents in search of high-quality education for their children, about a policy’s real intentions to take parents or the public to a place where, on their own, given complete information, they probably would not go (MacLean, 2017: 208). Even if some policies may have some well-meaning consequences, in the end, however, it is often those in power who benefit in the long term. Those hidden agendas are often not obvious, as many statements or policies are characterized by dissimulation and misdirection (Lafer, 2017). It is true for educational policies as well.
It is the third and the fourth type, unintended but anticipated, and (un)intended consequences, that are of interest in this special issue. It seems naive to believe that those in power would not know the truth. They know and yet allow negative things to happen anyway, maybe because they believe that the positive implications will outweigh the negative side effects, but also and more likely because it serves their hidden agenda. As Mathias Urban (2019) has pointed out, one needs to ask: cui bono? (Un)intended consequences provide an opportunity for those in power to benefit at the expense of children by making a profit, gaining power, controlling ideologies, and deteriorating democracy.
What these GERM policies mean and who is impacted: The ripples
The effects of GERM policies have been detrimental on many levels, the consequences rippling out well beyond the children who were the intended focus. When analyzing a policy’s multiple levels of impact, the imagery of a stone hitting the water is helpful. The policy creates ripples; those closest to the stone are the most obvious. Then, the ripples extend outward, perhaps colliding with other objects in the pond, the unintended consequences. In this section, we will provide some examples from the United States because we are most familiar with it in our professional context; however, we believe that some of these tendencies can be found worldwide. We explore some of the consequences for the most important stakeholders: children, teachers, and society. It is important to examine the ripples created by GERM policies and the intentions of those behind them with concrete examples.
The impact on children: GERM’s push for standardized learning and teaching, testing, and early academics
The days and lives of young children in ECEC settings worldwide have changed tremendously over the last decades, and, unfortunately, predominantly not for the better. As mentioned earlier, ECEC settings have been impacted by the increase in standardized learning and teaching, the overreliance on standardized testing, and the push for early academics in the subject areas of mathematics and language arts. The justification, and in this sense the intended and desired consequence, is the proclaimed aim (among others) to close the achievement gap and make children “career and college ready” to ensure the economic competitiveness of the home country in the global market—the latter, of course, illustrates that it is not the children, their lives and well-being, that justifies the investment in ECEC. Thus, the “schoolification” of ECEC, in particular in countries impacted by GERM (Moss, 2014), is at full force worldwide. Curricula are becoming more narrow, academic content is being pushed down into the earlier grades, and teacher-directed learning and teaching to the test are on the rise, simply because the highest value is placed on the curriculum that is tested: mathematics and reading (Zhao, 2018).
These changes have, of course, led to unintended but mainly anticipated consequences. For many, especially disadvantaged young children, life and experience in an educational setting have become worse (Zhao, 2018). Play and recess are reduced (Elkind, 2008), which means less socialization through play and less physical activity. What used to be a place for children to socialize, play, and explore together has become a highly structured, measured preparation for later schooling. Thus, one can speak of a new dominant, very narrow understanding of the education in ECEC, as well as the marginalization of the care aspect (Nitecki and Wasmuth, 2020). Biesta (2015) has summarized these tendencies as the “learnification” of education. Thereby, other and maybe even more important aspects of ECEC, such as creativity, critical thinking, self-regulation, intrinsic motivation, engagement in the community, and especially the children’s physical and emotional well-being, are marginalized. Furthermore, reduced physical activity is leading to higher rates of obesity (Kumanyika, 2011). Emotional stress and anxiety among students are increasing (Zhao, 2018: 17). Children are unhappy and act out more, resulting in higher rates of behavioral diagnoses and suspensions, even among the youngest. Perhaps it is not the child that has the problem, but the environment.
These negative side effects, however, do not come as a surprise. As Zhao (2018) has pointed out about the Asian education systems, which are often highlighted as the “winners” of international standardized testing, such consequences are well-known. While Asian education systems are indeed very effective in achieving excellent performances on tests, they are equally effective in producing negative side effects, such as the loss of students’ confidence and interest in the tested subjects, an increase in myopia, anxiety, depression, and suicide, and the loss of talent diversity and creativity (Zhao, 2018).
If these side effects are unintended but anticipated, what are the (un)intended consequences, if any? What is the hidden agenda and who is benefiting from it? A troubling consequence of the imposition of GERM on the field of ECEC is its objectification of young children to be controlled, creating a generation that will accept the status quo uncritically, which has serious implications for sustaining democracy. GERM policies do not value children, even if they pretend to do so. Too often, the children's right to childhood (Korczak,1929/2002) and children’s rights, in general, are ignored or simply neglected (Krappmann and Petry, 2016). This strong “governing of the child” (Moss, 2014), however, leaves no place for the hallmarks of early childhood: uncertainty, experimentation, or unexpected outcomes, for surprise or amazement, for context or subjective experiences, for “messiness.” Outcomes need to be predicted. Everything needs to be effective and based on evidence, even though life is the opposite: messy, complex, diverse, and unpredictable.
If children have no time to wonder or question, though, if expectations are rigid, how can children learn to question the status quo and think critically about the world in which they are growing up? Thereby, the (un)intended consequence, the hidden agenda, would be to create children who learn early to obey without hesitation, not to question the status quo, and not to wonder about other possibilities in life. Such an education, the “current regime of command and control” (Ravitch, 2020: 118), does not encourage children to become citizens of a democracy, to think about how the world can become a better place for everyone. As Zhao (2018: 2) has pointed out, “test-driven education does not result in citizens who can defend a democracy, nor does it produce the creative and innovative individuals needed in the modern economy.” Maybe that, creating a future generation that will accept the world as is, without questioning those in power, is the (un)intended consequence, the hidden agenda. The possibility that this consequence even exists should be enough for the ECEC community to be outraged.
The impact on teachers and the profession: Teacher certification requirements, increased control over teachers, and prescribed curriculum
While the child, or more accurately how the child performs on standardized tests, is allegedly the focus of many GERM policies, ECEC professionals are not able to escape GERM either. Again, the situation in the United States is a helpful example to illustrate such an impact. Here, teacher certification requirements have been tightened and control over teachers has increased in recent years. The narrative to justify these so-called reforms is that public education is failing, especially for underprivileged communities, and this is mainly due to bad, lazy, greedy, and incompetent teachers, as well as insufficient teacher training, teachers’ unions, and the contracts they negotiate. High-quality teachers, so the story goes, produce high-achieving students; therefore, extraordinary teachers need to be placed in each classroom to close the achievement gap, prepare all students for college and career, so that the American economy thrives again. The result is that the professional bar has been raised. Policymakers aim to prevent the problem of “bad” teachers by making the profession more selective. In many states, a master’s degree is now required in the job market (Lobman and Ryan, 2008; Norris, 2010). Thus, these new higher expectations are putting many teachers in debt and simply shutting others out of the profession.
An unintended but anticipated consequence of these policies is the shrinking pool of capable ECEC professionals, and this is for two reasons. An increasing number of young people are discouraged from entering the ECEC profession because it is less attractive, while at the same time, the process of achieving professionalization is more arduous and expensive. Besides, veteran professionals are bidding farewell to ECEC because they are “demoralized by stagnant wages, budget cuts, soaring health care costs, crowded classrooms, punitive evaluation systems, attacks on teachers’ job security and pensions, and public funding of privately managed schools” (Ravitch, 2020: 3). Thus, many professionals decide that they can no longer stay in their profession because they perceive the draconian standards and testing regime, the increased control, and the upsurge of prescribed curricula as meaningless and that the unrealistic expectations hurt young children. Many, who had at one point entered the profession to educate, teach, and care for young children, are burned out and leave for good, often disgusted by what the work with young children entails today. In combination with pay cuts, de-unionization, and crowded classrooms, it has created a “crisis in teacher recruitment and retention, leading to a less experienced, high-turnover teaching staff” (Lafer, 2017: 147).
The latter is important if one starts to ask about (un)intended consequences. Interestingly, many GERM supporters advocate not only for more rigid teacher education but at the same time for loosening teacher certification and alternative, high-speed licensing programs (Lafer, 2017). In such programs, there is little training, because every motivated person can teach, which is in direct contrast to the narrative that the teaching profession needs to be more selective. Programs such as Teach for America or the charter schools’ demand to certify their teachers are examples of such an intended dilution. Why is this happening? Why the contrasting expectations that push for allegedly rigid teacher evaluation to find and fire ostensibly “bad” teachers, while at the same time unqualified and inexperienced teachers are marketed as a solution? Who is benefiting?
It is worth mentioning Lafer’s (2017) explanation regarding the teacher and school evaluation: We must look for an underlying rationale that makes sense of these not as contradictory but as complementary policies. High-stake tests are designed to undo tenure and close public schools. As that is accomplished, a new education system will emerge, which runs on cheaper high-turnover instructors who follow canned curricula geared around test preparation and thus have no need for the levels of professionalism aspired to by previous generations of teachers. (2017: 148)
The impact on society: Privatization and democracy
Lastly and probably most far-reaching are the effects of GERM policies on our society at large. As mentioned above, business models have been applied to the complex field of education, as well as ECEC in particular. One glaring example is that of privatization. The term privatization summarizes a variety of global trends focused on making ECEC a commodity for sale, instead of a public good. The promise is that privatization will reduce inequality and improve education for all children. Competition, parental choice, and a free market, so the argument goes, ensure that all children receive equal education and those lower-class children will have greater access to high-quality ECEC settings.
Privatization with its features of test-driven education and parental choice, however, has not delivered on its promises. It rather works as a “catalyst for social inequalities” (Pedró et al., 2015: 5) and perpetuates inequality (Zhao, 2018). That is evidenced by its unintended but anticipated as well as (un)anticipated consequences. Nevertheless, educational “reforms” continue to be based on this flawed and destructive application of the business model.
This is especially true in the Global South, where the push for privatization, called public–private partnerships (PPPs), seems like a modern form of colonization and exploitation rather than a sincere investment in children or the development of sustainable educational systems. It has also been true, though, for the Western world, a prominent example being the destruction of public education in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (Ravitch, 2020). Another example is the so-called “low-cost private schools” (LFPS); schools that are directed at relatively poor households. LFPSs can be found in various countries, such as India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, Liberia, Zambia, or Uganda (Pedró et al., 2015). The most extreme example is Liberia, which has outsourced all primary and pre-primary schools, opening the door to far-ranging privatization of its educational system (Akoojee, 2017). PPPs are indeed often based on the needs and the demands of the local community, as governments are not able to meet the demand for ECEC (Edwards et al., 2019). Therefore, many international actors are happy to step in and promote LFPSs as quality education, all while profiting from the needs of families and children. Thus, they offer education at low cost but also predominantly low quality, due to the poor infrastructure; multi-grade classrooms; and low-paid, young teachers with minimal qualifications who must follow prescribed curricula (East African Centre for Human Rights (EACHRights), 2017; Edwards et al., 2019). Nevertheless, they are quite successful in convincing parents of the superiority of LFPS.
An unintended but anticipated consequence is the increased financial burden for families. LFPSs may be “low cost;” however, most families cannot afford to pay these fees. Thus, they cannot send all of their children to school, and, as a result, female children are often disallowed to attend such schools. Furthermore, families must make welfare sacrifices and forego basic needs. Edwards et al. (2019) point out with regard to the situation in Zambia that the poorest parents spend a larger portion of their earnings on schooling—when these earnings should arguably go to food, housing, healthcare, clothing, etc.—only to send their children to ECECs that are more lacking in terms of resources, teacher qualifications, and the quality of the physical space. (Edwards et al., 2019: 26)
The (un)intended consequences of privatization are more sinister. As mentioned, the claim is that privatization will improve education for all children and reduce inequality. However, removing ECEC from the realm of public goods to something bought and sold on the international open market has mainly resulted in the exacerbation of inequality. Privatization does not fight inequality; it rather increases it, only under the rouse of choice. The disturbing future for many countries, or in some cases already the reality, is a two-tiered system in which quality education exists for the elite, while the students in need of the most resources would receive the fewest resources and only basic instruction and indoctrination (Ravitch, 2020)—which may again be the hidden agenda. Thus, the push for privatization should be seen as an attempt to undermine the child’s right to a decent education, which is fundamental to a democratic citizenry. The goal of privatization is to “challenge the fundamental notion of education as a public right” (Lafer, 2017: 151). It is done by “lowering expectations and accustoming the public to make do with conditions of increased inequality” (Lafer, 2017: 52). If children and families feel as if they do not have the right to a free, high-quality ECEC provided by the government, and that they should feel lucky to get access to one of the rare spots at an (alleged) high-quality ECEC institution by paying a fee or winning the lottery, much is won for those who do not want to deal with the implications of real democracy. When education is for sale, and access and curriculum are controlled by those who wish to maintain the status quo, true democracy is at risk. Inequality only exacerbates the diminishing rights and freedoms of those who are not in power. Privatization only reinforces the inequality that exists globally and in our communities.
Examples of (un)intended consequences in this issue
The contributions in this issue reveal that unintended but anticipated and (un)intended consequences can take place and as such impact ECEC on various levels worldwide. The authors have focused on different ways that these consequences affect children at the individual level; teachers, schools, and the profession; and national and international political and economic systems.
As described, GERM and its (un)intended consequences impact ECEC systems worldwide. One of the most sinister threats to ECEC is privatization. John Kambutu, Samara Dawn, and Lydiah Nganga analyze in their article “Privatization of Early Childhood Education (ECE): Implications for social justice in Nepal and Kenya” the (un)intended consequences of privatization in Nepal and Kenya. Using an ethnographic approach, their study reveals that privatization and the rise of for-profit private schools do not lead to a higher quality for all children but exaggerate inequality.
Not only ECEC systems in general but also ECEC professionals are negatively impacted by GERM policies. In “Standardizing Latinx early childhood educators: (Un)Intended consequences of policy reform to professionalize the workforce,” Michelle Salazar-Perez, Leanna Lucero, and Blanca Araujo examine the intensified policy reforms to “professionalize” the workforce in New Mexico. This has had the (un)intended consequences of teacher shortages, especially teachers who share the cultural background of their students.
Maggie Haggerty, Judith Loveridge, and Sophie Alcock also look at the impact on the ECEC profession. In “Shifts in policy and practice in early childhood curriculum priorities in Aotearoa-New Zealand: Entanglements of possibility and risk,” they discuss recent policy reforms in the ECEC sector in Aotearoa-New Zealand that have led to what can be called the learnification of ECEC services. While they describe the influence of such reforms on the whole field, the analysis describes how ECEC professionals navigate these changes and influences in practice; and how they react to and maybe resist the notion that young children are increasingly seen as learners.
Christian Aabro follows a somewhat similar approach in his article “Juggling, ‘reading’ and everyday magic: ECEC professionalism as acts of balancing unintended consequences.” He examines how recent reforms and changes, many of them based on neoliberal thinking, have changed the field of ECEC in Denmark. However, he is also interested in the impact on the profession, how professionals juggle with the new demands and old knowledge. His article shows that, while there is a danger of de-professionalization, Danish professionals can maintain a new, slightly different form of professionalization.
GERM and its (un)intended consequences are a global phenomenon. Thus, it can be found in many countries worldwide. Geraldine Nolan’s “Early Childhood Education and CARE: Won’t somebody think of the children?” provides insight into the unintended consequences between the noble intent of childcare policies and the subsequent irony of losing sight of the needs of the child in these policies in Ireland. Focused on recent Irish policies, Nolan examines the effects on the child, specifically the diminishing presence of the child (3–5 years), as well as the omission of the child under age three, in such policies.
In “School deserts: Visualizing the death of the neighborhood school,” Vanessa Massaro and Monique Alexander analyze another (un)intended consequence of GERM policies, and school choice policies in particular: what they call “school deserts.” Using Pennsylvania as a case study and applying a methodology that analyzes the spatial relationship between students’ homes and high-quality schools, their article reveals the uneven distribution of access to good schools, and that areas with high-quality schools are significantly wealthier and whiter than school deserts.
Anna Ciepielewska-Kowalik’s piece, “(Un)intended consequences of educational reform from 2015/2016 on ECEC in Poland: A story of few mistaken applications that lead to significant disorder” describes the drastic policy changes in Poland in response to EU trends. A series of (un)intended consequences have altered Poland’s ECEC system over the last decade, disregarding the real results these changes have generated for education and its stakeholders.
Conclusion
The examples provided above, as well as those of our contributors, illustrate the profound impact that GERM has on all levels of the ECEC system—children, teachers, the profession, and society at large. GERM policies have not only hurt ECEC systems and children worldwide, but also contributed to the increasing erosion of democracy on a large scale. Education for all children, an education that deserves its name and strives to empower children to become active and responsible citizens who engage in complex social and political issues, and also question the status quo, is increasingly replaced with a caricature of education that trains children from an early age to follow prescribed orders and achieve on exams, and limits creative solutions. Teachers who should be allowed, and even encouraged, to use their creativity and professional training to assess the unique circumstances of their classes and adjust curriculum are stripped of security and freedom and instead bound by prescriptive curriculum and meaningless standardized assessments. Teachers in the system become role models for those who follow orders and will perpetuate the status quo in an unstable system where they are afraid to introduce a critical perspective. Parents are now faced with a plethora of school choice options, while governments struggle to or are backtracking from providing public education as a common good. Thus, ECEC is turned into a commodity that can be bought and sold on the open market, where winners and losers in the system only widen existing inequalities, even if education has always been and needs to be an area of life protected from competition, cost, and profit to be an essential part of a functioning democracy.
It is often not easy to see through these hidden agendas. Zealots who are pushing for such policies are not admitting their ideological commitment to ending public education. Instead, GERM policies are presented in a socially acceptable platform to support programs that have a less acceptable motivation and hide a malicious agenda: to shape and control the formation of children into law-abiding, socially acceptable adults, while those in power maintain their positions and inequality persists. To keep countries economically competitive in an increasingly competitive global market, GERM, a model that misapplies business practices to work with young children, seems to be the answer.
However, maybe the tide is turning. Despite all the efforts and money to push for GERM policies, the public in general, at least in the US but this is probably true worldwide, still does not support such policies (Ravitch, 2020). Furthermore, if there is any silver lining in the Covid-19 pandemic in which we are currently living, it is the notion that parents, as well as the public, will realize that teachers cannot be easily replaced by unqualified people and that public schools are an essential part of communities and their lives. Thus, teacher-bashing and public-school-bashing will no longer be popular or acceptable. Besides, the World Bank’s current and surprising announcement to officially freeze any direct or indirect investments in private for-profit pre-primary, primary, and secondary schools (Edwards, 2020) demonstrates that many have realized the destructive impact of privatization on education systems, communities, and children worldwide. Therefore, the Covid-19 pandemic could be an opportunity to rethink our image of the child, adults’ relationships with young children, and what it means to live with young children in educational settings.
At the same time, the Covid-19 pandemic could make things only worse. Disaster capitalism will probably not miss such a chance. Many so-called reformers will use the pandemic to “rethink” and “reimagine” education. An example is New York State’s Governor Cuomo’s (Strauss, 2020) already infamous words: The old model of everybody goes and sits in a classroom, and the teacher is in front of that classroom and teaches that class, and you do that all across the city, all across the state; all these buildings, all these physical classrooms; why, with all the technology you have?
Hence, critical research is needed—as demonstrated by the contributions to this issue. Those, as well as the examples provided above, call attention to the impact of GERM policies in the form of unintended and (un)intended consequences. Each policy, each stone that is thrown into the pond of ECEC, creates a ripple effect that extends beyond children, beyond teachers, to schools, countries, and societies, colliding with ideals of democracy, freedom, and equality. ECEC research needs to increasingly pay attention to who is throwing the stones and who is benefiting, directly or indirectly, regardless of the rhetoric or socially acceptable language surrounding such policies. The ECEC profession must be vigilant about its role in this situation. ECEC is viewed as an investment in the future and, therefore, put in the impossible position of being a preventative measure, or a simple solution for the complexities of our social problems. By framing ECEC as the quick and easy fix, meaningful possibilities for real reform have been silenced, while the far-reaching effects of GERM continue to spread outward. We can be proactive in examining policies and their consequences—unintended and (un)intended—to examine who is benefiting and what the hidden agenda is about. Only then will we have a full understanding of who is throwing stones and how we can bring placidity to the ECEC pond.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
