Early Child-Care and Educational Policies for the Developing World: The Brazilian Case

• Published in: Prospects (Paris) 2004-12, Vol.34 (4), p.481-491
• Main Author: Rosemberg, Fulvia
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Brazil; Child Care; Cultural Pluralism; Developing Nations; Early Childhood Education; Educational Discrimination; Educational Policy; Educational Quality; Equal Education; Foreign Countries; Gender Differences; Global Approach; Ideology; International Organizations; Quality Control; Racial Discrimination; Social Bias; Student Diversity
• ISSN: 0033-1538; 1573-9090
• DOI: 10.1007/s11125-005-2739-9

This article intends to show that contemporary proposals for early child-care and education (ECCE), typical of the modern process of neo-liberal policies, have been familiar to developing countries since the 1960s. Their heralds continue to announce the same news; they have just changed their clothes. These heralds are the international organizations that defend programmes receiving low State investment, yet are kept alive through the inadequate remuneration of women's labour. They thus reinforce ideologies that create and sustain the domination of gender, class, race and age. Beginning in the 1970s, this influence came particularly from UNESCO and UNICEF. They developed and disseminated the model for expanding "non-formal" provision supported through low public investment using simple buildings, unused or community spaces, plus the use of voluntary or semi-voluntary work (low paid) by lay persons, i.e. women without professional training. During the 1990s, the strongest influence came from the World Bank, which revived the same model without, however, having carried out an evaluation of its impact on the countries that had adopted it. To develop such an argument, the author bases herself on research and studies in progress. These studies are based on an analysis of official documents (Brazilian documents and those authored or published by the international organizations) and on macro data (demographic and educational censuses and the Brazilian household surveys). The author's criticisms of the ECCE guidelines provided by international organizations are that they do not promote equity in class, gender and race, as their premises postulate, but that they do lead, in the majority of cases, to incomplete, poor-quality coverage and provoke new processes of exclusion. The author warns ECCE specialists in the developed world to take care when establishing quality criteria for the developing countries in the name of cultural diversity. A just criticism of globalized models could make way for the arrival of even more unjust and exclusionary ECCE models in the developing world. (Contains 4 tables and 2 notes.)