Childhood undergrounds: Power, resistance, secrets, objects and subversion in early childhood education

This article argues that neoliberal ideology, through policy and governance of children in early childhood settings, has a very strong influence on children in Aotearoa New Zealand. It affects the way they grow up, play, learn, and perform their resistance and agency in the places and space of their education and care. Every hegemonic discourse is challenged by an equally powerful resistance, and every dominant childhood culture, in any ideology, is challenged also by a resistant childhood underground, punctuated by specific secrets, stories and play. If adults loose control and visibility, trust children’s voices and play, and allow them to have their secret places and spaces, perhaps they will allow them to develop in an uncontrolled way. What if having secrets–secret play and games–is the final frontier, and an essential part of children’s development? What if we adults would allow children to learn from one another without our presence–without us having control? One of the key learnings from this study was that children's resistance should be understood and accepted, and even rewarded in a certain sense, and not suppressed.