‘How Early is Early?’ Or ‘How Late is Late?’: Thinking through some issues in early intervention

Abstract

Early intervention comes in-between the lives of children, families and teachers. This article uses part of a report written by an educational psychologist about a little girl to question the nature of intervention through Rancière’s writings. As children and parents are seen as put into the position of inadequacy, they require such intervention, which in turn makes them more inadequate. The article goes on to highlight the numerous ‘givings’ involved in early intervention, through Derrida’s writing. However, such giving is questioned as creating expectations that receivers of the gift must fulfil, thus nullifying the gift. The conclusion suggests that starting from a perspective of equality and acknowledging the aporia involved could help the people in this scenario to take a different approach.

Keywords:

• early intervention
• Rancière
• Derrida
• psychologist
• giving
• aporia

Notes

1. See https://www.meef.gov.mt/Page.aspx?pid=543.

2. With the term ‘teachers’, we want to imply different people working with very young children and their families. These could include home tutors, early day-care workers, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech and language pathologists, and those having regular contact with children.

3. In The ignorant schoolmaster, Rancière’s voice is constantly meshed with that of Jacotot, and often it is difficult to distinguish between the two: it is almost one voice.

4. What we normally understand by politics, Rancière calls policing, the police order. Rather than a police force, the idea of policing implies policy-making, parliamentary legislation, executive orders, judicial decisions, economic arrangements, interest groups, etc. What all these have in common is that they situate us in a particular position, with a particular understanding and role, i.e. they position us according to predetermined criteria.

5. A recent study on US academic psychological research indicated that 10% of psychologists falsify data, 67% are guilty of selective reporting of studies that ‘worked’, 74% failed to report all independent measures, 71% continued to collect data to reach a significant result, 54% reported unexpected findings as expected and 58% excluded data post hoc (Anon., 2012).