Governor Romney recently vetoed a bill in Massachusetts that would have provided state-sponsored preschool. He said the cost would be in excess of $1 billion and that the benefits of universal preschool (for 2-4 year olds) are unproven. His stance earned him plaudits from the conservative National Review and Evangelicals for Mitt. Note that the bill passed both houses in Massachusetts unanimously, so Mitt’s stance is likely to be pretty unpopular in the Bay State.
I’m not sure how I feel about this issue.
Florida just started state-sponsored preschool for four-year-olds. My wife and I are looking forward to having our son get a few hours a day of socialization with other kids at the government’s expense, rather than ours. When my two older children were preschool age, they went to a paid preschool program that was quite good. I am expecting the public preschool program to be good as well.
If there is anything the government should invest in, it is public education. My instincts tell me that this is something that will help inner-city kids, new immigrants and working mothers most of all. These are the people who cannot afford private preschool, and government preschool should give them a head start.
On the other hand, I am in principle opposed to the massive expansion of government we’ve seen lately. Programs like this are not free — the funding comes from raising taxes on everybody. In addition, I’m not convinced it’s in society’s best interest to have more kids taken from their parents at such an early age (2 seems way to young to me).
I’m open-minded on this issue and would welcome input. Opine away!
I’m also torn. There are families who need the care for their children and whose children need the interaction and socialization involved because their parents have to spend too much time putting food on the table.
On the other hand, I’m totally against this increasing trend of having the state raise your children. I see two major problems with this. One, because of the great number of people, cultures and faiths involved, the classes will have to be very neutral so as not to offend anyone. This leads to wishy-washy, confusing lessons leaving the kids with no firm guidelines of what is right or appropriate and what is not. Two, because this is a state institution, the cirriculum will most likely be controlled by the party line– how would you feel if your child came to you and told you they’d read “Lisa Has Two Mommies” in class? Possibly a teaching opportunity for you true, but I’d presonally rather have a say in when, where and how such things are introduced to my child.
Maybe Romney says preschool is unproven, but I saw my daughter make huge leaps in her interaction with others as well as learning while attending preschool three hours a week. Her Kindergarten teacher told us that after a week they could tell which children ahd been to preschool, and which ones hadn’t by their vocabulary, knowledge of numbers, and interacoin with others. I’ll be sending my son for the same reason, having the government pay for it would just be a bonus.
I think calling it “state raising the children” is a little unfounded. This isn’t daycare, preschool is totally different. A few hours a week of learning is very different from half or whole day of watching tv and eating playdoh while being watched by government workers. And at leaast at our daycare they were very open about what books they were reading, and what was being taught. If I was worried about my daughter learning evolution in preschoool they would have told me so I could yank her right out.
As far as the money goes, I’d like to see us spend more on education(including preschool), even if more taxes are necessary. Having teachers send notes home asking for donations of colored paper and popsicle sticks gets really depressing. We’re going so far into debt for war, why not go into debt for education. Spend a small percentage of that war money on something that will benefit us.
Good for Mitt. Toilet money if I ever saw it. Mass. doesn’t even have the money to waste. The taxes are obscene and they need the money to fix the Big Dig fraud anyway. Screw the nanny state!
“My instincts tell me that this is something that will help inner-city kids, new immigrants and working mothers most of all.”
Doesn’t Mass. already have head start, subsidized day care, etc.? If so, the rest of us don’t need the government to help us raise our kids. Preschool is fairly cheap, I pay less than $100/ month for my preschooler. Sounds like some wasteful spending was averted.
I don’t think much of public school in general so …
Jjohnsen, yeah, I hate it when my two-year-old is indoctrinated by fanatical theory of evolution biology teachers. But more seriously, if I were in Massachusetts I would be worried about the types of things going on in public schools and what my kids were taught, but I doubt very seriously it will take place with 2-4-year-olds (but I guess you never know).
You have no problem with the government promoting school for 2-year-olds? Obviously, it’s voluntary, but at a certain point if “everybody is doing it,” that means you’re not normal if your two-year-old is not in public preschool (witness the demonization of home schoolers that goes on today). I’m not sure 2-year-olds should be pushed into school, although I’m OK with a few hours a day for a 4-year-old.
Seth, I know exactly where you’re coming from, but my kids go to public school in Miami, one of the worst school districts in the country, and their schools are absolutely wonderful. It has been the best surprise about living here, that public schools have gotten better and better every year. Yes, we live in a wealthier area, but we are right on the edge of a very poor area, and many very poor kids go to our schools. To give you an idea, my child’s elementary school is 10 percent black, 70 percent Hispanic, and only 20 percent white, and my child’s middle school is a third black, a third Hispanic and a third white. (In Miami, these figures are extremely relevant because school quality seems to correspond well with race, with the worst schools being in black areas, the second worse in Hispanic areas and the best in white areas). But despite the worries of many people, the schools my kids go to are excellent.
I don’t mind subsidizing preschool for at-risk kids, and such programs already exist.
But I don’t want to be taxed to pay for everybody else’s kids- if you value preschool, pay for it yourself. If you’re poor or high-risk, call Head Start.
I don’t want to see the beurocracy expand again, particularly since the benefits to the general population are scientifically unproven.
My daughter went to a private preschool for 2 years, and it was wonderful. My son didn’t go to preschool until about 6 months before he started kindergarten, and (for him), it worked out.
Preschool is a highly individualized program, and it’s crazy to spend public funds on what amounts to a babysitting program.
I very much agree, I only question whether this particular program is the most cost-effective or needful aspect for public education dollars. There are so many other issues in Florida public schools that I have to wonder.
Several have pointed out that there are existing programs for those who have financial need/language issues, which makes it difficult to sort out the benefits from this program per se.
One of the issues with the pre-K program in Florida is that it is NOT helpful for families wih employed parents due to the quirky schedule. The state only provides funding for 3 hours a day (although some districts have coughed up funds for fulltime enrollment). So the families have to work out some kind of transportation/after-school care that might cost more than their previous daycare plans, and thus enrollments have been far less than expected.
I also have concerns about the strong literacy/numeracy emphasis of the Florida curriculum, which can be damaging to children (our family optometrist even commented that there were eye/brain problems when children are forced into that kind of thing too soon). We chose to do Joy School, the program from Linda and Richard Eyre which is about teaching values and attention rather than academic skills, and we did not teach our children to read until they were individually ready–only one started reading at 4, the others were at least 5 years old. All were certified gifted when they grew up, and it didn’t hold them back at all to let the academics wait; I think it gave them confidence, to deal with such things at their own pace.
Have you ever met a non-working mother? If you mean a mom who also has a paid job, then “employed mother” is more accurate (and far less insulting). Also, I don’t understand why it would help the mother more than anyone else in the family…in my daughter’s family, she is the primary breadwinner, and her husband has the primary childcare responsibilities, so if parental time were freed up, it would help him more than her.
Geoff and others, the state-funded Pre-K program in Georgia is for 6.5 hours a day, not “a few hours a day or week.” It is all or nothing, i.e. you must commit to bringing your child 5 days a week from 8 am to 2:30 pm. Many if not most are in ‘early learning centers/AKA day care facilities. It is clearly a way to subsidize childcare for employed parents. There is a pretty decent curriculum, but the teachers are rarely accredited so it’s implementation is spotty. The official purpose is “school readiness.” Most families I know feel torn between the free 26 hour a week program and paying for a 9 hour a week program.
I might be in favor of a voucher-type pre-school program, but not whole-sale. Private schools (esp. at the university level) are a testament to the problems with government education–after all, private schools have to compete against publicly-subsidized schools and families of private-school attendees end up paying twice what they would if there were a voucher program or some other decentralized system. Good for Mitt.
I’d be concerned that anything that’s “free” today — by which they mean that people who aren’t getting much utility from this program get to pay as much, or possibly even more, than the people who are — will be “compulsory” in twenty years. Also, on a case by case basis involving only the limited pool of families that I know, it seems to me that the families that have taken advantage of Ohio’s “you can keep your kids out of school till they turn 7” rule have much happier and more successful kids (as teens/young adults) than the ones who got their kids into school as early as humanly possible.
Full disclosure: I started kindergarten at a public school two months before my 5th birthday. I started homeschooling a few weeks before my 12th birthday, and I entered the largest (at the time) public university in the country a few months before my 17th birthday. I’d been accepted to a private pre-K program in Pasadena when I was 4, but my mom wanted me to go into the more academic kingergarten and not “fall behind.” Yeah. Umm, at least I have lots of notes for my “strategies to avoid” book if/when I have kids of my own.
Can “saints” ever advocate a government transferance of wealth (i.e., legalized, but highly immoral theft)? Whatever happened to securing and protecting our rights, PERIOD! Are we that far brainwashed that socialism is ever “good”? Repent!
Oooh, don’t get me started on this one.
Short answer: preschool is a great investment for kids who don’t have access to quality education/child care in their home environment. It’s a terrible investment (from a government standpoint) for those who do. Universal preschool is nothing more than government provided daycare for those families who can provide a decent home environment for their children. Let’s not kid ourselves. The government should provide preschool opportunities for the children who need it. If you’re reading this, I can almost guarantee that your children do not fall in this category.
I think the public education system is generally speaking a failure that is getting worse, not better as the years go by, in terms of the very fundamental purpose of education in the first place – the transmission of culture and knowledge from generation to generation.
Now some people, perhaps most people, need educational welfare subsidies. I don’t think anyone needs government administered education, however. It is like poisoning the well, at least in the modern environment. What we should do is privatize every public school in the country, turning them over to non-profit charitable foundations, and then spend public funds on grants, vouchers, and scholarships of various types.
I think that what you mention, families of the working poor, the poor and the like, will get huge benefits from this. Further I think that society at large will also receive benefits from this if it helps prepare these children for regular school (simply because statistically parents from these groups can’t or won’t be able to do as good a job as more affluent parents). This in turn may cut down on expensive charges for crime, welfare and the like, not to mention the benefits of having more productive citizens in the future.
Re #6 –
On the other hand, I’m in favor of the State raising children that would be neglected by their working, disengaged parents.
There are an increasing number of people trying to home school — as if it were a new pop culture practice — who have no business trying to home school. In some cases, it’s so bad that I’d consider it almost criminal behavior.
I know personally at least 20 parents homeschooling today or who have homeschooled. Of those 20+, there is only one that has any business doing so (basing my opinion on their approach and in the results in the children). I find it interesting that the mother has a Master’s degree in Curriculum Design and taught in the public schools in Utah for a decade (the father has a Master’s in Instructional Design). In other words, they actually learned the nuances of teaching and curriculum before they set out on a quixotic attempt to do better than the local teaching professionals. The other parents — every one — have an axe to grind with the schools, so they are going it alone.
I know of at least two bloggers who homeschool, and they talk freely of the trouble their kids get into while they are ignoring them to blog. They talk freely of how they have lost their enthusiasm for teaching the cool stuff, and they are trying to just get the basics in. They talk about how expensive it is to homeschool. But, they won’t send their children to the “professional educators” that are free in their community.
If you made me pick between public preschool and “let everyone homeschool” (I know, there are in reality many more choices than this), I’ll opt for the public preschool. Go ask kindergarten teachers how woefully unprepared many of their children are today.
Now, I realize this may come off as a contradiction of my own comment in #14, but really, it’s a clarification. We like to bash public schools, but they are relatively harmless. Engaged parents know how to use them as a tool. Disengaged parents — especially the disengaged homeschooler — can’t be saved anyway, so they might as well send them to the public preschool. Is a public preschool with a curriculum worse than leaving them with grandma to watch Disney videos all day while mom’s at work?
That said — my wife and I prefer to combine a few days of the local fee-based preschool and our own efforts for preschool. Once kindergarten starts, we send them to the local school district (one of the tops in the area) and we shift our emphasis to augmenting the teacher’s efforts. So far, it seems to be working.
I have a major problem with public sponsored preschool.
I live and California and there has been huge million dollar ad campaigns for the past 5 years, and getting it on the ballot in some form or another (state sponsored preschool).
I see no possible benefit for 2 year olds in preschool. At 2,
it absolutely is daycare. There are plenty of studies that contradict the purported benfits of preschool even beyond 2.So it really all depends on what you want to believe (as always)
That being said-I don’t have a problem with subsidized daycare, or Headstart.However I seriously question Headstart benefits. About 15 years ago I was doing a research project and interviewing Headstart directors. I was told by them that Headstart recent studies (at the time) showed huge benefits to the their students when they started Kindergarten. In other words, they were all caught up whereas they normally would have been behind. However, by third grade these same students were where they would have been without Headstart. Clearly there are other more influential factors.
In my town some irate parents (mostly very highly educated–very upper class) started a charter school. One of their main complaints for leaving the mainstream public school was that an elementary school the school district closed was next to their daycare which was the company daycare (company employs 8000 people–and if they both work, their kids mostly went to that school, and to that adjoining daycare)
They immediately made all day Kindergarten and began working on a preschool at the charter school–the state will fit the bill.
Many parents who did not work and wanted their kids to go to the charter school were outraged, and did not want all-day Kindergarten.
I definately see this as just wanting daycare paid for.
As a taxpayer–I absolutely do NOT want to pay for someone elses daycare decisions.
My sister tells me that about a decade ago in Missouri a state sponsored preschool was introduced as a pilot program to educate the poorest of the poor. Two year olds started. I understand that the idea was to teach basic hygiene like teeth brushing and nutrition. It was told to the parents it was mandatory—the parents didn’t know enough to fight it. I don’t have a problem with teaching basic life skills, but with it being mandatory.
This is way too reminiscent of Soviet and Nazi ideals–the idea that the state is better at it–nor do we know it will be successful in the long run (It would be interesting a decade later to now see the results–did it help?). I worry not about what will be taught at state schools, but that it will become compulsory.
Thirdly, sure, preschool can be helpful–but my son who only did one year of home based preschool is well ahead of his peers–and he has better social skills–much more empathetic than his peers. (Yes–I know I am the mother–but this isn’t solely all my observation)
I would like to wish you much luck. And a lot of money. Thank you.
Even though a latter day saint, I am not a believer that motherhood or being a housewife is all that important or all that difficult. A housewife/mother can get started late – if she wakes the kids up late, or gets laundry done late – nothing bad happens. If I show up to work late I get fired, rent does not get paid and we end up on the street.
A mother can show up to “work” in dirty sweats – I can’t. If I show up to work in unprofessional clothes or looking dirty I get fired.
A mother can yell at her “co-workers” (husband and kids). I can’t. If I yell at my coworkers I get fired.
Being a housewife/mother has to be the easiest job in the world. In reality you can’t get fired from being a housewife. If you can;t get fired its not a real job. So get a real job, learn real responsibility (like good hygeine, being on time and having a good attitude) drop the housewife role and put the kids in day care. REAL daycare is run by professionals who have a program to have your kids develop – a housewife who raises kids is a disorganized woman with no real plan who wings it every day. Have real professionals, organized people give your kids a real chance to learn and develop – otherwise your kids will learn by modeling the behavior of their housewife mothers, and will only learn to wear dity sweats and drag around the house and take naps.
Geoff B, you mention the “fanatical evolution theory” – the definition of fanatical is “irrational zeal”. The idea that the world was just miraculously created is irrational. Evolution and God can co-exist.
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