We like to imagine early childhood as a refuge from the world — innocent, apolitical. Neutral. At first glance, it appears that way. Children — “our future” — curious and ready to learn.

Educators eager to prepare them for what that future holds. Classrooms filled with soft rugs, primary colors, labeled bins, laminated schedules. Familiar spaces that look remarkably alike from one building to the next.

There is comfort in that sameness. Comfort in knowing what to expect. Comfort in routines that replicate themselves across neighborhoods, districts, and states. And while the walls may be painted different colors, the rhythms are similar. The expectations are similar. The hierarchies are similar. But historically, this comfort has not always been evenly distributed.

Let’s pull back for a moment — beyond the rugs and the reading corners, beyond the generic versions of “teacher” and “student” — and look closely at the systems that have shaped these spaces.

They did not emerge in isolation.

These classrooms are not simply “just the same.” They are structured the same. And structure always serves someone.

And if they are created to serve someone, by default, they reflect the values, fears, and power structures of the broader society — often masked behind the language of safety, uniformity, neutrality, and professionalism.

This is by design.

Language is never incidental, only veiled. Safety veiling what we are trying to protect. Professionalism veiling what we are trying to preserve. Neutrality veiling what we do not want to interrogate. These words shape not only policy but practice. They shape what is questioned and what is accepted without hesitation — and, ultimately, who holds power and who is expected to adjust to it.

This is the quiet part we don’t always say out loud: the first 1,800 days of a child’s life are not untouched by power.

They are shaped by it.

Neutrality in early childhood rarely announces itself as philosophy. It sounds like, “We don’t want to make this political.”

It sounds like, “We’re just doing what’s developmentally appropriate.” It sounds like, “We treat everyone the same.”

Reasonable. Responsible.

Neutrality looks like following policy without question. Deferring to standards even when they conflict with what we know about identity and belonging and avoiding hard conversations in staff meetings because no one wants to create tension.

And while few are willing to call it philosophy, many will deem this school of thought professionalism.

And it’s a delicate balance, being neutral.

You must be careful with your language. Careful not to offend. Careful to remain “professional.” In early childhood education, we have mastered the art of polite politics — soft phrasing, gentle critiques, well-intentioned euphemisms.

But here’s the thing: neutrality is a stance.

Careful language has not shifted the outcomes. Careful language has not produced equity.

Silence has not protected children. And neutrality has not kept harm from taking root in the first five years of a child’s life.

When we pad critical conversations with euphemisms, we can unintentionally uphold the very systems that depend on our silence — neglecting the experiences and identities of those most impacted by them.

And this impact doesn’t shout. It whispers. It tells us that this is not the right time. Not the right place. That this is not our lane. That someone else will handle it. And in that silence, the house remains intact.

Not a literal house, of course, but the supremacist structure we have inherited — the educational system itself. The way we behave in that house? Those are the tools to function within it.

And the system is not broken in the way we often suggest. It is operating according to the values it was built upon.

Audre Lorde reminds us that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” The master’s house — built with tools of control, uniformity, hierarchy, and compliance — was never designed to produce liberation. It was designed to maintain order. To preserve comfort. To reward assimilation.

When neutrality becomes our stance within that house, we are not standing outside the house looking in. We are actively utilizing the master’s tools, perpetuating the harm that fortifies its walls.

Hear me when I say this: it will not dismantle itself.

Zoom back out to the classrooms, with the rugs and bins and the hushed work of not stirring the pot. The educators in those rooms will learn to spot differences before they are cognizant of that pattern. They will learn which bodies are corrected more often. Which voices are described as “too much.” Which forms of play should be redirected. Which cultures are treated as enrichment — and which are treated as deficits.

They won’t learn this through professional development. It is absorbed through repetition. Through tone. Through what is interrupted and what is allowed to unfold.

That means early childhood is anything but neutral territory. It’s architectural.

The foundation flourishes on “the standard.” Whiteness — not white people, but the systemic structure for how the house was built — becomes the baseline and functions to keep the house standing. Because it is treated as standard, it is rarely interrogated, rarely challenged. What is considered “appropriate” or “well-managed” often reflects the house and serves the dominant narrative.

Once our children, during those sacred 1,800 days of life, enter this house, they will learn too. They will learn whether they can take up space. Whether they are too much or not enough.

Their bodies should be still.

Their play should make sense to adults. Their curiosity should be efficient.

Their emotions should be manageable.

These messages predated our instruction. They came with the Puritans. They helped build the house.

As educators, we have inherited a system that predates our values. And that system was created for children who were all the same.

And the other children?

Those children do not simply “struggle” within it — every child who does not naturally conform to the dominant standard finds themselves outside the margins — outside the frame of who the system was built to center.

Over time, that difference becomes internal — the soundtrack playing on repeat in their heads.

A brain under stress learns less. So a child who is consistently corrected learns more than their letters, more than their numbers. What sticks is the narrative they’ve absorbed about themselves.

And we have called that the way it’s always been. But this is the way it’s always been, right?

It’s the way you remember your teachers. It’s the way your colleagues operate.

It’s the way the administration expects you to be. Order. Efficiency. Readiness. Compliance.

We rename control as structure.

We rename compliance as readiness. We rename removal as support.

We call it classroom management. We call it professionalism.

But those titles, those tools — veiled or unveiled — have never served us. They have not protected children from disproportionate discipline.

They have not protected Black children from being labeled before they are literate.

They have not protected educators from maintaining what harms them too.

The system within the house is doing what it has always done. And it’s doing it well.

If we can acknowledge this, then we must also recognize:

We are complicit.

Unknowingly, yes. Unwillingly, maybe. Unaccountable? No.

Not because we designed the house. Not because we intended harm.

But because we continue to move through it. Because we enforce what we did not build.

Our fear of speaking out of turn has created a culture that normalizes what does not align. It has rendered us silent because silence feels safer than disruption.

Many of us entered this field with a commitment to do no harm. Harm does not require intention. It requires impact. Two things can be true. And that truth creates tension.

We feel it in our bodies, even when our minds have normalized it. The constant surveillance. The documentation. The behavior charts. The subtle ranking of compliance. The policing of children’s bodies — and, by extension, our own.

That tension has a name. Moral dissonance.

It is what happens when what we believe about children collides with what we are asked to enforce.

And if we are honest, that collision has been happening for a long time.

So the question is no longer whether this is how it has always been. The question is whether we are willing to interrupt it.

If the house is to be dismantled, we must pick up tools that we didn’t get from the same white supremacist system.

In order to do that, we must commit to being intentional about resisting what has been normalized. Our conversations must be different. Our terminology must be different. We must take what we know to be true of children, childhood, and development and make it visible.

Liberation must become our praxis.

If you’re wondering how to make this actionable, it will look like centering children’s well-being over compliance.

Citing a child’s ability to think, speak, express their opinion, and not require a mask as measurements of their belonging.

Receiving the exuberance of a classroom as evidence of engagement.

It will look like examining the rituals we have inherited and acknowledging whose narrative is centered — and whose is excluded.

Equality asks if we are treating everyone the same.

Equity, on the other hand, demands to know if everyone has what they need. Everyone — teachers and children alike — needs culture, context, and community.

Interruption does not require permission. Everyone who is reading the words on this page has the power to interrupt the narrative that does not serve us and will never serve our children. The only thing that is required of you is courage.

Courage to question what feels standard.

Courage to speak up, even when your voice is shaking. Courage to choose the child over the system — always.

The time for waiting for the house to collapse on itself is over.

No one is coming to reinforce a cracked foundation or loosen a single brick. For those of us who have been patiently waiting, I must inform you that no one is coming to save early childhood from itself.

If we want to see things change — for our children and for ourselves — we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

Kisa Marx

About the Author

Kisa Marx

Kisa Marx is a child advocate and anti-oppression educator with over two decades in the field of early childhood development. In late 2023, she founded The Play Lab Foundation, her nonprofit organization committed to providing humanity-centered, self-affirming, high-quality care for every child. Kisa continues her advocacy through information dissemination as an anti-bias curriculum developer, workshop facilitator, and National Advisor for Defending the Early Years.