Tom Kertes

Today I am participating in a conference on the human rights of the child. The conference feels more like two different events, as there are two very different sets of speakers throughout the overall conference. One set of speakers talks about statistics and law, often citing lines in an international treaty that they want the government to honour, and another set of speakers talks about their work as community, care and cultural workers, sharing stories and descriptions of their programs and projects.

One set talks statistics and uses studies of people to make claims about what is best for all children. Another set talks about their own values and beliefs, or about how they believe children ought to be treated. One set primarily uses stock photos to illustrate ideas stemming from population research, based on comparisons of differences between average scores of groups of children. Another set tells stories stemming from their own experiences with children and families.

The presenters who talk of studies are called experts. They work at universities and are researchers. They write the books and articles that inform and justify policies with implications for everyone. They serve on the councils, committees and boards that determine how public resources and community power is used. And they also train most of our leaders in universities. They train people how to measure things in an effort to simplify and understand humans, how to trust experts, how to think about things, and how to be powerful.

The presenters who talk of their programs and projects are called practitioners. As practitioners they are the “doers” of community life. When practitioners are influenced or controlled by experts, they become the forces that make expert ideas real, practised and powerful. As community workers, cultural workers, support workers and child care workers, practitioners do the work that makes, sustains and enriches communities.

Experts need practitioners to reflect and act on expert ideas – because without people acting on these ideas nothing will come of them. But do practitioners need experts? While the question may be too general to be useful, since there are times when we do need experts and times when we don’t, I still think it’s a good question to keep in mind when attending conferences like this.

So do we need experts? Perhaps we can answer this by imaging how to power a community without experts in electricity production. Truth is, I can’t imagine having electricity without knowledgeable and skilled people who know how to produce and distribute it.  But this does not mean that we need experts in values to make related decisions, such as how much electric power to have (which could include none at all), or how to use and distribute electric power, or what social and economic costs to pay for the production of electric power do not require experts. People do not need experts to tell them how to feel, what to value, or how to decide what they believe is best for their community.

What troubles me is that many of the expert speakers at this conference act as though they are entitled, perhaps by reason of being “smarter” than other people, to have greater influence in shaping or expressing community values than we – the non-experts – should have. This is reflected in many of the unmentioned assumptions of their work, such as the assumption that we can make meaningful conclusions about human ways of being by studying collapsed and simplistic measurements of behaviour. What gets lost in meaning when we reduce human behaviour in quantified and linear studies is huge, and important to know when evaluating the information.  The experts today and yesterday left this part of their expert knowledge out of their sweeping conclusions about what’s best and how’s best for everyone. It is also reflected in the unmentioned and underling values of their work, such as that some people should have more voice than others in community decision making, or that it is okay for some people to use the work and power of others without their meaningful consent.  Leaving out these beliefs is dishonest and not helpful, especially in the context of a forum for human rights.

The practitioners who I listened to at the conference did not trouble me in these ways. They talked as sharers with others, sharing their ideas, experiences, stories and beliefs with the people attending their sessions. The stories were often inspirational, such as a story about a year-long process of working with a family whose young child required extra support needs in order to communicate with others. At first the child’s father told her that he did not trust her, and did not want his child to go to preschool or to receive any supports to assist with his communication. She talked about how challenging this experience was for her, and how she was was faced with her agencies rules that would of created barriers in forming a relationship with the family. She also talked about her own fears and concerns for the child. And she talked about how she, over time, came to know the family and how trust was built over time. From this story we came to know the presenter as a person, and came to understand ourselves and the community she worked with better. She made no claim that her experience would be reflected in our work, or that we should respond in the same way that she did. She left that up to us, respecting our capacity to act and reflect, and to be wise.

Communities do not need experts to know how to be loving, supportive and responsive places. What we instead need is control over our own resources, our own work and our own power to realize what we already know and believe. When we trust ourselves as equally capable persons who know how to love and how to be, then we can use the tools and resources developed by expert tool makers in order to realize our own dreams and values for our communities in whole.

I think that the difference between participation and being intentional about relationships in caring communities is huge and important to think about.

This is because when we ask “how can someone participate in our program?” we start thinking of the program, not the person. But when we ask “how can I relate with a person in a caring community?” then we start with the person.

Forming relationships with families, and being intentional about relationships, should be the goal. Then we can focus on each family, one person at a time, and ask ourselves what can I do to facilitate a deeper relationship?

• Build trust
• Listen to each other
• Respond to each other
• Respect each other

Over time, relationships will develop and provide a base for a community to emerge. And that is why we should think more about relationships, less about participation or involvement.

From a recent post at Liberation Learning:

Our democracy, including its core institutions and the rule of law, should be treated as a cherished resource, a repository of the public trust passed to the current generation from those before us. It is from these legacies that we can take the next steps toward expanding our values and moving closer to achieving our vision of a just and equitable world. Our country’s legacies of public health, public education, public safety, public libraries, public power, public media, public arts and culture, public parks and other public sector institutions should be built upon in order to create new institutions that are committed to ensuring fairness and equity in the delivery of essential public services. Other institutions are just as important to sustaining our quality of life and projecting human rights values. These include institutions that support a skilled, organized and productive workforce, independent and reliable journalism, a co-ordinated and organized economy, and a vibrant and living community based on respect and inclusion of many cultures, languages, faiths and ways of being.

The base of what we have, and continue to build, provides our means for working with people throughout the world, in partnership and solidarity, so that we may help build infrastructures and institutions to extend human rights both within and beyond our borders. As we build institutions in Canada we grow the capacity for moving forward in the world, as we part of the human family and the only way to build power for purpose is on top of already existing power, for that same purpose. We will do this not by transplanting our organizations onto other communities, but by exchanging lessons learned with others, sharing resources on an equitable basis with everyone, building connections across communities, and developing leadership for human rights by working together for common purpose. Our institutions at home provide the leaders, resources and ideas in order to work in such partnerships. Without such institutions in places throughout the world, we (all humanity) will have no basis on which to extend and expand our values.

There is no choice between expanding human rights and helping others. The assertion of this “choice” is based on a false dichotomy, one which leads to a decline in human rights values everywhere. Canadians who are committed to human rights should work in co-ordination with others committed to these values, building many kinds of institutions, in many places, for many purposes, relevant to many local communities, at all levels (from local to global) and in many forms. Each institution built should strengthen the capacity for future growth in other communities, or for other purposes, or at different levels, or in different forms. read more

I think that “leader” is a more useful word than “advocate” for describing what’s needed to create a comprehensive system of adequate child care supports for B.C.’s children and families.  Many advocates are leaders, and I don’t want to dismiss the important work that many advocates do for children and families – the point is not create a choice between leaders and advocates.  I simply think that the action of leadership is more essential for making a difference than is the action of advocacy. We need more leaders to change the child care system in B.C., not more advocates.  And we need those leaders to come from the bottom up, or from the ranks of unpaid and under paid child workers – including parents, grandparents, preschool teachers, daycare workers, nannies and other early childhood educators.

An advocate speaks for someone, or on behalf of someone. In contrast, a leader speaks for herself by working with other people to build power and get heard.  Leaders make a difference by influencing community life. That is why leaders are the most essential thing required to create change, build organizations and sustain movements for justice, or any other set of beliefs and values, all of which goes beyond advocacy – or speaking up on behalf of others. Leaders are needed in communities because they create and sustain organizations that shape cultural and community life. Leaders are required to influence community life and for an idea or cause be acted on and become part of society.

This post is addressed to child care workers, which includes everyone whose work contributes to the care of children (parents, grandparents daycare workers, preschool teachers, other ECEers, etc.)…

I don’t know about any of you, but I have not helped decide how to structure the economy from the halls of power, or written a government budget, or decided on monetary policy for the Bank of Canada. I was not in the room when the minimum wage was set at a poverty-wage level, or when it was decided to abandon a national child care policy, or when transportation and urban planners decided to make 2 hours a day of commuting routine for many workers.

I don’t think that it should be on our shoulders to carry the burden of responsibility that should instead be on those who are in these rooms of power. The people making decisions that are leaving too many children and families without adequate child care supports should be held to account and made to do a better job in carrying out their role as leaders of our democracy.

This is to say that those of us on the outside of power should not be expected to carry an unfair load because those in power failed to provide for adequate family supports. The failings of the policy makers need to be solved by everyone working to figure out a better way to support families, not by child care workers taking on an unfair burden in the form of low-wages and extended working hours. The current “go it alone” child care strategy simply doesn’t work – we should expect better from our leaders.

Economic policies, like monetary supply, trade relation treaties, labour law, tax policy, government spending policy, and economic development policy all lead to real differences in how ordinary people live our lives. These policies determine how many hours a week we work, how much time we spend in traffic or on transit, whether or not it will cost $900,000 to buy a house in Vancouver, who gets access to essential services (like health care, housing, education, child care), and how much of our productively at work goes to support our social needs.

When the decision makers decide to set up an economy based on 40-50 work weeks, two wage-earner families, and 2 hour commutes, the burden for solving the crisis these decisions create in children’s lives needs to fall on the decision makers themselves, not on child care workers or families. The decision makers have the power to fix the problem. We should demand that they use that power to solve the problem their bad economic strategies created.

There is no way to build a child care system on the backs of child care workers, as such an approach simply won’t work. No matter how much we (child care workers) care about the well-being of children, asking us to put in extra hours or continue to be unpaid or underpaid for our work is not acceptable and won’t result in the kinds of supports that all families require. Solutions to the child care crisis require public sector support, in the form of a comprehensive system that – just like with public health care – is provided universally, efficiently and fairly.

From my child care blog, Liberation Learning:

Employers who pay their workers poverty-wages are essentially off-loading their expenses onto workers and their families. These businesses are asking the rest of us to hand over our resources for their profits. This a bad deal not only for workers, but for everyone (other than the employer on the receiving end of the equation). These employers are not only exploiting workers, but are also asking everyone else to subsidize them. These subsidies come in the form of struggling families and the social costs associated with poverty.

Update from my other blog, Liberation Learning:

Child care is highly valued work. Families contribute a lot of time, effort and money in caring for children. Neighbours and other community members also contribute to children’s care. Most people would agree that caring for and educating children is a paramount duty of the adult generation, and want to do whatever is required to realize this value for all children.

Recent entry on my child care blog, Liberation Learning:

A minimum wage of $15 an hour (or any level that’s actually above poverty) would make a substantial difference for child care workers, including daycare workers, preschool teachers, and domestic workers and nannies, since many of these workers are paid less than $15 an hour. It would also make a difference for other child care workers, including the unpaid child care workforce, and also those who are already paid a living wage. All child care workers would benefit because the minimum wage is about more than just wages, and more than just about those paid the least.

(My posting on Liberation Learning is responding to a posting on CCPA’s blog Policy Note.)

I absolutely believe that all persons are born as sacred beings. And I know that this statement cannot be taken lightly, if it is to have any meaning. For someone, or something, to be considered as “sacred” requires the highest form of respect. Sacred persons should be treated not only with respect, but also with reverence and love. And since I believe that all persons are sacred, and that all human life is sacred, then I believe that I am obligated to treat children with absolute respect, in absolute dignity, with total and complete reverence for the unique person that each and every child is.

There is no respect in taking power from others. There is no dignity in the conditions of powerlessness. To take power from that which is sacred is a grave and serious offence, which should be stopped.

It troubles me to see the numerous ways in power is taken from people of all ages, and especially, but not exclusively, to see the ways that power is taken from children. Now that I am once again working with young children as a child care worker, I am reminded often of the many ways in which children’s powerlessness, or the perceived right of adults to take power from children, is taken for granted. I see it in many details of early education practice and in the many contradictions of early education theory. I see it in how early childhood educators are treated by others, how our work is not respected because children are not respected and therefore nor is the work of caring for children.

Children are young and therefore have less experience than adults and are less mature than adults, which leads to the fact that children do require adult guidance and support. But the fact that children are less mature, and are more dependent on their family and community for support, is not an excuse for taking away children’s power or dignity. Children should have the power to make any and all choices of which they are capable of making without harming their development and safety, or that of others. Adults should restrict intervention and control of children’s lives only insofar as such control reflects both this standard and is also reflective of the sacred nature of children as human beings.

This does not take anything away from adults in terms of our role as both caregiver and teacher. Adults care for children and other adults, and should continue to do this because caring reflects the values of respect, dignity and sacred life. And adults teach each other, sharing culture, ideas, knowledge, viewpoints, stories, experiences and other learnings with each other. Respecting the power of the child to exercise agency and make choices does not limit the capacity of the child to learn from others, nor should it restrict others from assuming the role of teacher in working with children and supporting children’s learning and development. Just as adults should work with others to create, share and express culture, so should adults and children work together for these aims.

I am excited to be back in child care, but wonder how difficult it will be to survive in a system that creates so many powerless situations at so many levels. How do we right a system that seems at its very roots to be based in oppression and in the denial of the most fundamental and essential qualities of respect and dignity for all, of all ages, at all stages, of all abilities, and at all times?