Abstract:
Based on ethnographic research in one private elite preschool in Rio de Janeiro in 2002 that sought to imprint citizenship notions on young children, this article discusses the relationship between educational practice, early childhood education, and the meanings, possibilities, and limitations of a critical and democratic pedagogy. I begin with a description of the school and its discourses of citizenship education. Next, I showhow the everyday practices through which children learned to become citizens through the production of a “citizenship habitus” focused on the importance of politics and on being a responsible citizen. I then discuss the paradoxes of this project, given that it was a private and elitist school; despite its egalitarian intentions, the school also served as a site for class reproduction. Still, I also suggest that, when young children cease to at least take inequality for granted, a small step is taken in the right direction.
Keywords:
citizenship; critical pedagogy; democracy; early childhood education