ABSTRACT
Education law is silent about children under the age of four.18 Consequently, it might initially appear odd to discuss the home and children under school age in a chapter concerned with education law. However, for critical perspectives on law, ‘silences’ such as this are significant as they reveal discursive constructions and understandings too often accepted unquestioningly as ‘common sense’. In this context, the silence in education law reflects and legitimises a variety of complex perceptions that view formal learning and compulsory school attendance for young children as inappropriate, unnecessary and, as the debate regarding nursery schooling discussed below demonstrates, even potentially harmful. Furthermore, it similarly reflects and legitimises the closely aligned view that young children – regardless of their gender – should be cared for at home and, ideally, by their mother.
