ABSTRACT

In this chapter, the author wants to add two further grounds for contestation: politics and ethics. He argues that early childhood education is, first and foremost, a political and ethical practice, meaning that it is built on answers to political questions, questions that are by their nature contestable, and also on relationships, which call for the choice of a relational ethics, an ethics that guides how we should relate to each other. There are debates in early childhood education, but not perhaps as many as there could or should be. In particular, they are lacking between followers of the dominant stories and those who adhere to what he has termed the resistance movement. Both the story of markets and the story of quality and high returns start with technical practice. Technical practice is their first practice. Working with an ethics of care, one can define a different relationship between education and care.