Culture refers to the lifestyles, social behaviour and identity of a society, reflecting the traditions of a place. Everyone’s identity is based around the culture in which they have been brought up, where people are able to define themselves in a community and choose to define themselves around others. In early childhood, children learn through observing, experimenting and communicating with others within their cultural environment and are therefore heavily influenced by the community. The word ‘culture’ is hard to define as not everyone has the same upbringing, not everyone has the exact same culture, due to differences in faith, beliefs, language and society. Although people see the world in similar ways, it is not always the same as they are taught. The world is becoming increasingly more diverse, “it’s forever” (Whitebook cited in Diaz Soto, 2000: 143). It is that difference in communities, in societies which challenge people. If there was little diversity children would not understand or learn about the importance of diversity. It is the acceptance and respect for different customs and traditions that gives rise to the term multiculturism, which allows for the peaceful coexistence of different cultures in close confines.
Culture to a lot of people means to be traditional, and to many it is important to maintain a specific traditional way of life. Some people earn their living from the culture the world expects and thinks they have and hence believe it is important to maintain their culture. People can hide their modern culture to pretend culture is still the same as their historical culture. However, culture is not superficial. Social anthropologists are trained in the interpretation of narrative, ritual and symbolic behavior to help distinguish trends. Culture can be used to look at the development of society within a community, based on the level of sophistication, which can give rise to class-based distinctions. In this respect the role of education is important as it is apparent that better education gives rise to more sophisticated levels of culture.
Close relationships introduce young children to the cultural tools (Vygotsky) through which their knowledge and understanding grow and language develops. Language is sharing knowledge, skills and understanding, and in so doing develops personal identity throughout early childhood. Major policy questions about the place of culture in early childhood programs have been asked. This is also important with regard to the function of early childhood programmes in the daily lives of young children, families and communities. Thus, ‘education for all’ goals cannot be implemented in a vacuum, without accounting for the specific circumstances of children. Variations in children’s development and learning are shaped by cultural values, as well as by economic and structural inequities. This tension is especially evident in the context of rapid social change and migration, especially for minority group children growing up in complex, pluralistic societies. Under these circumstances children encounter competing values and expectations, and are therefore at greater risk of educational exclusion. Hardman’s thesis describes how she sees ‘children as people to be studied in their own right, and not just as receptacles of adult teaching’. So, Hardman suggests that children ‘existed within a separate subculture, and had their own ways of thinking, their own worldviews, and their own cultural understandings in the form of games and rhymes’ (Barnes and Kehily, p37).
Aries did the first historical systematic study of childhood. Up until fairly recent times a significant proportion of infants did not survive to adulthood – more than half of the child population being lost in many societies due to malnutrition and disease. Aries conjectured that high infant mortality made it very difficult for parents to get too close or attached to their children, or to ‘sentimentalise’ them, in case they were to suffer great emotional pain on losing them. Ariès research revealed that the term ‘childhood’ first appeared and was developed within the 16th and 17th centuries. His research generated great interest in the history of childhood amongst historians, sociologists and psychologists. A broader look at the history of childhood has been undertaken by Cunningham, who showed that from the 18th century onwards ‘a wall of private life’ was raised between the family and the wider society (Cunningham, 1995: 5), with community sociability on the wane. For Cunningham, Ariès was more interested in childhood than in children, and in ‘family’ more as an idea (ibid: 6). Much child psychology (.g. Piaget) holds that there are stages of development through which all children must pass towards adulthood. However, in contrast, in many contexts childhood has been curtailed, allowing no possibility of a childhood of the kind we routinely take for granted. Lowe, points to a comparatively recent idealisation of childhood as portrayed in books, films and on television, where ‘childhood’ itself underwent a cultural redefinition.
In Britain, during the Industrial Revolution, “childhood meant different things in differing locations, depending upon particular local patterns of industrialisation” (Lowe, 2004: 68). Factory owners saw the possibility of gaining a very cheap labour force from the burgeoning towns. Thousands of young orphaned children were taken long distances from their homes and confined in near prison-like conditions for long hours of industrial labour. Living conditions were overcrowded and unhealthy, with appalling survival rates. A relatively new ‘construction’ of the child was initiated during the 19th century, where the child was seen as the object of pity or philanthropy. Reformers such as Robert Peel and William Wilberforce, alarmed at children’s conditions, helped initiate government legislation to protect the child. Many Acts of Parliament made it harder for unscrupulous employers to exploit children. This was the first serious engagement of the state in its modern form with children. By controlling the conditions and setting minimum standards, the state became the arbiter of children’s well-being. Popular education was arguably driven as much by a determination to impose some kind of social control as by any spirit of charity, as highlighted by Lowe who stated “surely no coincidence that regular hours, submission to the demands of the bell, and the ready acceptance of a system of rewards and punishment.” (Lowe, 2004:68). The spread of mass/universal schooling had a number of effects. It enabled childhood to be perceived as a set of stages through which young people progressed naturally including nursery, infant, junior and secondary education. Such schooling involved a standardisation of childhood. Thus, it became increasingly easy to identify ‘templates’ of childhood, to which ‘template’ solutions c
ould then be applied and enabled the gendering of childhood. So, we see a permanently changed view of the ways in which the State should deal with the child. “Since the 1880s agencies have appeared which are deeply influential in determining society’s view of childhood” (Lowe, 2004:68), and the range of areas in which the State has felt it appropriate to intervene towards children has expanded dramatically.
The social context of childhood is important and has been used to place the relative position of the child in society, and how they view the childhood of the child. As society becomes increasingly multiracial, multilingual, and multicultural, so too grows the need for the abilities of educators to support the development of children by instilling in them the tools they need to live together respectfully and stand up to prejudice. Educators and researchers have been asked to rethink relationships with those who are younger in ways that recognise agency, voice, and complex identities as well as a continued struggle for social justice. The importance of listening to children and viewing them as active social agents has been highlighted. This has resulted in an examination of the power relationships and views of children as experts in their daily lives. A child’s worth varies across cultures and social classes, generations and families see development as dependent on the social and cultural experiences of the child, not as a universal and unvarying process. The progression of children is determined by their experiences, the interactions they have with other people and what their communities see as normal and appropriate development.
Culture and social context influence the childhood paradigm, where it more than simply a belief system, with a set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them. It is therefore necessary to examine explicit theories of early childhood, education and care, to reflect critically on the nature, role and purposes of early childhood education. The new ‘postfoundational’ paradigm, ‘offers the prospect of infinite possibilities informed by local knowledge and provisional truths’ (p.233). Rather than adopting the modernist paradigmatic approach of claiming universal ‘grand truths’ that hold across time, space and culture. So postfoundationalism recognises the existence of many ‘local’ truths, and so diversity and difference are positively welcomed and embraced by postfoundationalist theorists. Postmodernism is concerned to acknowledge that there are diverse worldviews, knowledges and ways of being. It challenges dominant regimes of truth and grand narratives and instead recognizes that how we come to understand the world in which we are located is contextually and discursively fashioned. Early childhood education is shaped and defined by particular regimes of truth and grand narratives. Postmodernist perspectives seek to find ways to make these known and to recognise children, and how we engage with them, as inherently political and subject to constant change.
Overall, the main discourses that inform and affect the understanding of early childhood are social, historical and cultural. These approached have caused people to develop a theoretical and contextual view on early childhood in the world. They categorise and emphasise, for instance, on gender and thereby prevent children from expressing or exploring their own thoughts. Such discourses can create a glass filter and shape the view of the world. For example, the development of coloured BIC pens designed for women infers that all previously designed pens were only for men. Being labelled with a difference affects childhood and the expectation of the child and what they believe they can achieve. The ability of the social circle to influence a cultural outcome is also significant. For example, a girl labelled as a tomboy can be influenced by the circle that they are not being enough of a girl, which is not viewed in society as being ‘correct’. The concept of childhood over time has undergone continual change reflecting social evolution and behaviour. Childhood is about learning about responsibilities which are then transferred to an adult world. Cultural and social awareness is essential in this process for progression of society.