The War against Universal Pre-School

has already been lost, so don't even enlist. I was browsing some articles on the internet, and the other side is so well-funded that if you care about anything else in life, you'll need to rethink your priorities. I'm not even going to give you the links. Trust me on this one, or do your own google work.

When "Head Start" got going about 50 years ago for poor families it created an image that some kids might get ahead of others if you just did the right things early enough. Teach some colors, how to paste and draw, some social skills, and perhaps it won't matter that mom's on drugs, or dad deserted the family. So middle-class parents (like me) rushed to the challenge--and they put their kids in programs too, thus moving them ahead of the low-income kids who didn't have an enriched home environment, good health care and nutrition, college educated parents, and a father in the home. Or--and I'm just guessing here--that's the excuse for Head Start children (government pre-schools) not making up the difference when they are matched to middle-class and wealthy kids who attended private pre-schools PLUS had all the family advantages. I know my children attended pre-school in the 1970s, but I'm sure no one had heard of it in the 1940s, or if they did they called it grandma's house or babysitting. I taught them to read and count because I think their pre-school emphasized social skills, sitting still for story time, and not throwing fire trucks at each other.

Speaking of which. Today I was putting away exercise equipment in a room full of pre-pre-schoolers (under age 3) and their parents. I noticed a foster child, and not because he was black, but because he was the only one not using the toys "appropriately"--he was throwing them across the room (had a great arm, too). The other toddlers just worked and played around him very intent on whatever they'd chosen--sandbox skills, riding tricycles, crawling through tunnels, sitting on daddy's lap, etc. When I was using the rest room, the little one in the next stall asked her mommy if she could watch me. And mommy was there to explain manners and rest room behavior. Not all little girls get that sort of one-on-one discussion with their mothers about using public toilets--toilet paper, hand washing, manners, etc. The difference between what I saw and day-care is that there were probably two children for every adult, and it only lasts 2 hours--the parents, not paid aides, were doing the supervising.

Back to the war you missed. The education system is salivating--it enlisted years ago in this war and is extremely well trained to combat any argument you may have. Pre-schools have a patch work of standards by city and state for buildings, curricula, teachers, aides, safety, play time, unions--I mean, can you see the economic opportunities here for colleges of education, the building trades, the regulatory agencies? My head just swims with visions of dollars in chubby little fists. Convincing people that a child's mind and behavior are completely malleable with just 20-30 hours a week away from mom, grandma and the hood, and that the payback to the government will be enormous when they don't go to prison, shouldn't be any more difficult than convincing them we control the climate. If we just spend enough money. . . Whoopee. It's worth a chunk of that stimulus, right? After all, stingy old Bush was only spending $7 billion a year on pre-schoolers--Obama and the teachers unions who supported him can do better than that.

So what if the research is totally shaky and biased? (No research denying the value of universal pre-school will ever see the light of day in peer reviewed education journals which are totally dependent on federal money from the editors' salaries to the grants for research to the professors' tenure track requirements to the library subscriptions to the license for digitizing the information in huge databanks).

Although the little squirts do have to be born first before we enroll them in pre-school. Maybe that's the angle we should take? Pit FOCA and the feminists against the universal early childhood education movement.

Do children need day-care or daddy-care?

If Democrats want to wag a finger this week, get all the men in a room and demand that they mentor and cajole young men about their responsibilities and to marry the mother of their children. And if you are divorced and can't take care of your first family, don't start a second. Even if the new wife or girlfriend nags. Barack Obama essentially did this during the primaries, and so did several other black leaders. I may not like his politics but he is a good role model for young men. But when the numbers are crunched, it will show that women contribute to poverty when they don't marry the fathers of their children and have babies before finishing high school. Feminists on the left need to report this instead of blaming President Bush, or men in general. Birth control? Just Say No, my sister.

These media poverty stories never change. Even though we can all look around and see an incredible difference between 2008 and 1988 or 1958, in the news it is always the same--doom and gloom. No opportunity. No jobs. Hunger. Hopelessness. It's extremely political, and if I were a Democrat, I'd be ashamed that none of the "hope and change" programs we promised in the past have made any difference. Except that one in the mid-1990s under President Clinton, when welfare was cleaned up. Oops. He was forced into that one by Republicans, and the left was fighting mad. But that is his legacy. Millions of women grabbed hold and became energized tax payers, developed a back bone and showed that old American spirit. Obama will try to change that if he becomes President by sneaking in reinforcements to keep women with a step-daddy in the house named "Uncle Sam." Universal pre-school? One more way to get more taxes and more control and show no gains. Universal pre-school will create more feel-good programs, a demand for more taxes to fight poverty, more low-income jobs to be administered by educators, and more reasons for mothers to get into the labor force. Head Start is over 40 years old--no gains beyond the early years of elementary school.

Take away: The poverty gap is no longer racial, it is marital.