I lost track of how many times I've heard someone say, children are too young to talk about race. This sentiment is usually coupled with “I don’t see color,” and they both make me cringe. Even though I believe the person sharing these myths and problematic approaches is coming from a good place, we must remember that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  And we must raise the expectations of early childhood educators when it comes to addressing the elephant in the room.

When I saw the call for editors for special issues of the Global Education Review shared in a group for early childhood educators and researchers, I immediately thought about how we can lean into early childhood values and principles, such as child development, free play, open-ended inquiry, child-driven curriculum, etc., to resist the growing neoliberalism and fascism threatening to take over public education. It was December 2024, and we were preparing for a second Trump administration, which we knew meant an escalation in the ongoing attempts to silence educators teaching for truth, equity, and justice. The CRT boogeyman had been unleashed, causing many states to enact legislation banning teaching about the history of racism and supporting LGBTQ students. As college students led a national protest movement against the genocide in Gaza, they were met with violent police attacks and criminal persecution by university officials. It was clear that education, as the practice of freedom, would continue to face attacks from those who seek to maintain the status quo of education as colonization.  

I was thrilled to be invited to curate a research collection by Em Clark, founder of Liberating Childhood. I decided to focus on racial justice in ECEC and shared five articles and one book that influenced my thinking.

We know that curiosity is an innate, intense drive that motivates young children to learn through active exploration and relationships.  Whether it’s the sensory exploration of a two-year-old or the endless questions of a four-year old, young children are built to learn new information. Fueled by intrinsic motivation, young children desire to learn and know about the world. So if children are naturally curious, have an innate desire to know things, why is learning in school often experienced as a mind-numbing chore? Now I know not all kids feel this way about learning or school. I, for one, loved going to school, and I loved learning so much that I became a teacher and then a teacher educator. I would go back to school right now if I weren’t so close to having all my student loans forgiven! But many children today do not like going to school, and when you ask them why, they often say that learning is boring or difficult. 

I know some people find it strange that I’m always talking about freedom and liberation in early childhood education and care. Those two concepts are rarely linked to educating young children. When I was in graduate school, I learned about liberatory pedagogy by studying Paulo Freire and bell hooks, but those theories were typically applied to educating older teenagers and young adults. No one talked about what a liberatory pedagogy meant for young children. 

I’m not gonna lie, terms like play-based, playful learning, and guided-play irk my nerves. They imply that true play, child-driven, unstructured, free play, is not enough. That real learning only happens when the activity is play-based, playful, or when the teacher guides the play. Well, the truth is, play is enough, and these activities aren’t play. If the teacher came up with the idea, it’s not play. If the activity has external rules or goals created by the teacher, it’s not play. And if the teacher has to ask questions and push the child to do something they aren’t doing, it’s not play.  

Freedom to Teach = Liberated to Learn

When people think of teaching or school, they rarely think of freedom. Even those who loved school wouldn’t describe it as liberating. And I went to school before the rise of the global education reform movement (GERM)—before rigid national standards, hyper-testing, and privatization transformed classrooms into pressure cookers. Before free play and recess were replaced with screens and academic mandates.