Ethics and Politics in Early Childhood Education Book

Ethics and Politics in Early Childhood Education is a compilation of ethics and politics practice in early childhood education realm, which rich with the historical and various philosophical, theoretical and academicals perspective in early childhood discipline. The authors accommodate the compilation of their former researches and studies regard the early childhood education practices development in international level. This text book also claimed to provide important arguments, thesis and dialogues to the broad reader, such as principals, teachers, teachers' instructors, and wide range of students, researchers, policy makers and people who interested in early childhood education. Nevertheless, there are some circumstances in this book that still debatable, include the text organization, the use of language and key words definition, the persistency of authors' position, and the balance of illustration and examples.

This text book shows an understandable outline and purpose. Although the organization is quite overlapping but the chapters within these sections are written thoroughly. These can be seen on the authors description about the book's structure in chapter one. The authors elucidate the succinct themes of the book's discussions. The theme mainly emphasized on the ethics and politics in early childhood education.

However, Dahlberg and Moss express their ideas with a sophisticated language and there is no clear definition about preschool, child care service, and other institution which dealing with children as the keywords. As a result, non-education background could not comprehend the textbook as a whole also in understanding the term of early childhood education in each sentence which related to these issues, unlike represented in Dahlberg former writing Constructing early childhood: what do we think it is? (Dahlberg, 1999).

In the following chapters, Dahlberg and Moss expose the various philosophical understanding in early childhood education development, which stimulated by Foucault and Deleuze, Derrida and Levinas thought (Dahlberg, 2005). These historical evidences show many intellectuals argument on how the infant and toddler institutionalization bring dilemma to the practitioners when they dealing with care practices and other institution which related to children as ethical and political instrument.

With the western sided examples, the authors claimed that some of the discourses only led early childcare services into a new economical and societal dilemma, which not succeed in demolish poverty and social problems. These also give more complicated argument in what is the best scientific knowledge and what kind of instrument and documentation which could capture the adequate portrait of the early childhood education practices. Somehow, these thoughts do not come up with extensive practical definition of ethics terminology, so that every example only described in theoretical way based on their former researches. These include the contradicted idea of universal ethics such as the ethics of sustaining the confront relationship, the ethics of care, a pedagogy of listening, minority politics and Utopia, also in how the neoliberal capitalism format the operation of early childhood services. This means that both authors give no convinced position on how they value the ethics itself.

Moreover, in chapter 4, the authors' position seems to be not persistence and balance as contradicted with what suggested in Unequal Childhood: Young Children's Lives in Poor Countries (Penn, 2005: 3). Here, the authors state that the ethics of encounter which inspired by scholar like Bill Readings (1996) and Rinaldi (2001b) which conduct universalistic ethics and care could be generalized, while Helen Penn seen education as a cultural product so that the contribution of globalization in the development of early childhood education and its practices would be various and depends on the culture of a country. Consequently, the care, teaching and learning process and the assessment techniques in assuring the preschool quality in the western country would not be the same with what could be implemented in the Eastern countries (Moss & Pence, 1994; Moss, Dahlberg & Pence, 2000).

In chapter 5, 6 and 7, the authors' emphasis on the preschools and schools reform possibility through extensive models of schooling which implement ethics and politics. They also persuade readers that there is a chance for the institution to avoid from being political mean as described through Reggio Emilia in Northern Italy, BASUN Project, and the Sheffield Children's Centre in the North of England case as learning example. Yet, there are no illustrative evidences which give an exact example for the reader, so that there is less possibility for the reader to disseminate these ideas. The authors only give the narratives about the school practices, include the school community practice universalistic attitudes, such as the ethics of sustaining the diversity and dynamic circumstances, the ethics of caring children, and the implementation of in depth pedagogy of understanding trough listening each other also documentations. They also describe the involvement of the societies in conducting their own minor politics, where reconstruct the civilization is their main agenda in order to prepare the children as intelligent and responsible agent of change in creating better future, also reform the fascism governmentality into more democratic civilization. Although these efforts stated could be done through practicing a mutual communication among principal, teachers, administration staff, students and parents, the evidence in not adequate and not give the real picture of the schooling models. Therefore, it is not easy to visualize how the school community design the programme in a collaborative way, so that the reader would meet obstacles in applying the step of implementing universalistic ethics practice.

As the last point, refer to Bill Readings thought (1996); the authors conclude that this Utopian project is a great expectation which could achieve only with strong motivations. With their optimistic, if there are more preschools and schools conduct universalistic ethical practices, this unmeasurable Utopian project (Santos, 1995: 483) could be the effective method in creating diverse understanding environment with a harmony relationship among the people throughout the world. Moreover, there still need more optimum efforts on networking between the early childhoods institutions with other alliances so that the ideal condition could be gain. The authors doubt that without further researches and studies, we cannot maximize continues improvement in the ethical and political practice in the preschools.