The politics of childcare

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Pre-school education is just over 200 years old. It began in Alsace in Eastern France where Strasbourg graduate, JeanFrederic Oberlin, a Protestant minister, in 1767 provided a village school.

Fifty children attended aged between 1 or 3 to 12 and 13 and attention was given to play and exercise as well as education.

Three women-Madame Oberlin, Sarah Bonzot and Louise Schepples-heiped Oberlin create the first nursery schools in Europe.

Oberlin's schools, although achieving an interanational reputation, were not imitated in other parts of France.

Private philanthropy flickered only like patches across Napoleonic Europe.

Small schools or care centres appeared in Paris, Germany and England, and what started in Alsace was taken from Paris to London and by a quirk of history, re exported . from London back to Paris in 1825.

Madame de Pastoret opened an "asile". or refuge for children (mainly under 3) of working mothers in Paris in 1800.

It is considered by historians that Robert Owen's work for young children at New Lanark, and the Westminster infant 'asylums' in London, were inspired by the discussion that went on in Britain after ieading of Madame de Pastoret in Maria Edgeworth's novel Madame de Fleury' Social need The first aste was to become the foundation stone of a whole system of pre-primary school education-built in response to social need-the disease, starvation and dangers of the streets for children.

The Salles' d'Asiles were charitable institutions in France in 1827 and were not officially recognised until 1837. Gradually council and communal authorities accepted the duty of funding them. There were 102 in France by 1836.

A manual of 1851 reminded teachers that the children were working class members of society:

"Let nothing be lacking for their health but nothing added which could be termed a luxury, or even an extra comfort, in the care of children whose whole life will be spent in conditions of privation".

Liberal reformers who held the future of early childhood education in their hands were forced to want "better times' to put their ideas into practice -these included Rudolf, Virchau, Eduard Seguin, Frokel, and Victor Hugo.

In the century after Oberlin the general view accepted in France was that local authorities were responsible for the care and education of the young.

Pauline Kergomard influenced the reconstruction of the Salles d'Asiles. The new style "maternelles' were to be free, voluntary, secular and mixed, and were to be created at the expense of the municipal or parish councils.

Ministerial instructions in 1881 stated that local councils should bear expenses of buildings, equipment, etc and the government assumed responsibility for teachers' salaries and how the centres were run.

GERMANY In Germany, Frobel expanded existing theories of infants learning spontaneously through play. His experience in 1830 of observing the growth and development of a friend's child led to his book "Summary of the Story of a Child's Development: AMERICA Frobel kindergarte: Children at work in mines 1842 Home conditions in East London 1871 During the First Period of Life". . This is one of the first studies of early child development and Frobe opened a school for them in 1837. He formed a joint stock company to manage the kindergarten project, but nis last years were clouded by opposition from the authorities and severe financial problems.

BRITAIN Robert Owen, a self-made capitalist, used his money as a His plans for his New Institution' at. New Lanark, Scotland, included a playground area for children where they could go before they were old enough to enter the school in the middle.

Robert Owen founded the first infant school based on treedom, tresh air and play. It is interesting to note that a century and a half later, after two imperialist wars and radical social change, capitalism has been unable to provide Owenite schools for the majority of the sen fol tr his brc hel law in Philadelphia: but Frobel died before he received a reply. It was immigrant, sympathisers that opened a kindergarten in Wisconsin for German speaking children in 1855.

Elizabeth Peabody of Boston took up the cause in 1860 and 115 local assocations were formed across the country. By the 1880s the San Francisco Association alone was able to support 41 kindergartens.

• It was economic recession Sylvia Pankhurst: opposed war and fought for nursery provision and opposition that cut back the advance. Boston closed the public kindergarten on the grounds that the city could not afford it. Private benefactors also closed their purses to the cause when times were bad.

But in St. Louis William T. Harris incorporated the kindergartens into the public school system of St. Louis and it weathered the financial storms in which many kindergartens disappeared in the United States.

Interlinked

A closer look at Britain during the 1800s shows how the concern of infant mortality, the industrial revolution and the need for a healthy future workforce for capitalism was interlinked with social reforms and 'child care' in that period. Respectable middle class children were looked after for the first decade by a nurse and governess.

The middle clasș nursery was a dream world of fairy tales and dolls completely divorced from the austerity and discomfort of the Victorian days. • Working class children were less fortunate. They spent their days on the streets, in factories, in dark mines or sweeping chimneys. Children as a labour force were a cheap investment and realised high profits for employers.

The employment of children, although prohibited by the Factories Act in 1819, was still carried out by thrifty employers throughout the 19th century. Part time child labour was not made illegal until 100 years later!

Social conscience stirred reformers and liberal pioneers to fight for education for the 'lower orders' at public expense. This was despite opposition from Lord Londonderry and James Graham, conservative opponents of expenditure on children. Their philosophy was simply: exploitation yes; expenditure no!

The landowners and capitalists feared that education for the poorer classes would mean them becoming permanently discontent with their role in life.

There was a clear connection between motheis going to work and high infant mortality. Children were left in the care of very young children of seven years old or elderly women.

Babies were given pap' as their diet-bread softened and mashed in warm water and dosed with laudanum (opium) part of a series McKinley loo y and political I ght for childcare of articles cing at ackgrounc to facilities.

keep them quiet.

In response to these conditíons, charitable campaigns grew. By 1870 the movement towards early education was in full swing. Some 25%: of 3-5 year old children in England and Wales were at school.

The proportion rose to 29% ten years later and 43% in 1900.

The school entrance age of 5 years old was established in 1870 and Shattesbury, tried to unsuccessiully lower the age to 4 on the basis:

"of using educational discipline as a means of protecting children from the poverty or greed of their own parents."

But it was the greed of the capitalists that children needed to be protected from!

Some employers had begun to realise that babies were required not only for the maintenance of the Empire but to continue production.

Women were seen as both the producers of the future labour force, but aiso as a labour reserve-to be summoned to the factories (as in wartime) or sacked (as in times of high unemployment) when economic crisis is rife.

Mortality

Concern at the rate of infant mortality from the capitalist class point of view was aptly expressed in the terminology of commodities and assets in this quote from C.T. Ewart in 1910:

"If men represent the income to be used and spent freely by each succeeding generation, women must be considered as capital to be spent sparingly in the present and to be husbanded carefully for the future and for the welfare of the The propaganda on the importance of child health with its bias towards motherhood did provoke action and legislationbut it also created attitudes about the relations between child, family, and state.

It Lelped consolidate the view of the "mother's role" as child-rearer and homekeeper.

This served the interests of industry and empire by ensuring that children-the next generation of workers and soldiers (assuming they were men!) would be raised at a minimum cost to the state.

It also set up ideological barriers to married women's work outside the home, while at the same time leaving them available as a reserve labour force for emergency use.

Kindergartens were therefore limited to the fee paying middle classes.

But in 1910 the McMillan sisters fought battles for the slum children and set up a clinic in Deptford which later became a nursery school.

Social reforms were used as a bulwark against socialism during the years of industrial militancy before the first imperialist war.

Lloyd George and Beveridge visited Germany and were conscious of the 'success' of Bismark's authoritarian imperialist administration and this resulted in a form of state national insurance for Britain.

War work

Money was of course found and found quickly to establish day nurseries for the working mothers needed for war work, The Ministry of Munitions gave a 75% grant to local education boards plus a 7d allowance per day for the attendance of each child. However. the mother also had to contribute!

After the war, the Fisher Act of 1918, Section 19, stated that local education authorities were empowered to supply or aid the supply of nursery schools and classes for children over two and under five.

But with the end of the war, the return of men to the labour market and an economic crisis, attitudes and propaganda rapidly changed.

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When will they go? That force this through within the is the only real question WWTPU, it is doubtful if any hanging over the future embark on such a chancey careers of Labour's "Gang venture. plate when to stage their the Labour Party know that split from the workers' they cannot hope to take with Labour Party in the immediate The moves towards a aftermath of Saturday's Special "Centre Party" rest therefore on Conference-at which they are the ability of Jenkins and co. to virtually certain to see an elec- enlist the "block votes" of sectoral college system adopted tions of capitalists, small which concedes a degree of businessmen and the prosperous trade middle class-in thé form of of Three" as they contemother union bureaucrats will The right wing splitters in Sp Behind the unlikely banner of an USDAW resolution, advocates of democratic reforms to the Labour Party are marshalling their forces for a complex battle next Saturday.

USDAW-long an unquestioned stronghold of the right wing within the Party-has tabled a motion to the Special Conference calling for an electoral college to be established Yet the resolution is such a dramatic change from previous USDAW positions that there remains the possibility that it could be withdrawn, and the union's votes thrown in behind the more orthodox right wing policy of allotting 50% of the votes to the PLP.

Mathematics

So complicated are the mathematics involved that AUEW leaders are to consider on Tuesday whether or not to aries are seeking a mandate to support any college offering a majority of votes to the PLP.

At present it appears thatincluding the AUEW-there are some 2.7 million trade union and CLP votes committed to opposing democratic reforms within the Party.

The task on Saturday will therefore be to marshal' the maximum support behind the resolution which offers 'least concessions to the PLP while standing a chance of command. Rodgers

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•Labour Party in turmoil 'GANG OF 3' ecial Conference SETTU GU