Towards an enabling history for the child day care profession in Canada

Canadian early childhood educators and child care professionals must seek to understand in what ways they perpetuate facets of their own professional malaise. From rationalizations that make of poverty wages a virtue, to an underassessment of the skills and knowledge required to create developmentally appropriate and individually sensitive learning environments, the field must squarely face those restrictions it has placed on itself if it is to move forward on behalf of children and families. This article addresses one facet of that self-imposed, restrictive environment — the perpetuation of a history that is neither ennobling nor enabling and presents the proposition that an alternative is available.