The objective of the present text is to analyze, based on a set of official documents and under a Foucauldian perspective, how the nine-year fundamental education (and the new curriculum organization implied by it) has become an emblematic effect of a process of "change in emphases" (Saraiva, Veiga-Neto, 2009) about the types of rationality guiding the social practices focused on small children. To this end, the article initially shows in what manners other "changes in emphases" have been operated in different national contexts. That is to say, based on works by Hultqvist (1998) and Baker (1998), the text describes how profound modifications have been carried out in Sweden and in the USA, respectively, concerning the care of, and service to, pre-school children, as well as in the proposal, and even in the form of organization, of early childhood schooling. Next, and taking those authors as its basis, the analytical discussion centers on three fundamental topics: firstly, we describe the seizure of childhood in the name of something that is denominated and presented under the aegis of quality; next (and following from it), we turn our attention to the relation between the State and the concept of project-child (a relation wherefrom springs a formula of ideal-child - ideal-society) and, lastly, we deal with the concept of capable-child as a discourse object that emerges simultaneously from the space left by the logic of rescue (Baker, 1998) and from the reciprocally constitutive tensions between early childhood education and fundamental education.
Extended fundamental education; Childhood; Governmentality; Early childhood education