Preschool for a head start?

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: schooling on 3 Dec 2005.

I get nervous with all the hype over preschool. California’s initiative in pushing for the Preschool for All Act, if successful, could help make Universal Preschool a reality. The fact that advocates are talking about compulsory preschool for 4-year olds as if it would solve social ills and correct educational deficits, is disturbing.

Here in Malaysia, the education ministry too harbours similar ambitions but infrastructure and funding at this moment are major obstacles in the way. I’m glad for that. Some zealous educators point to Head Start as evidence that preschool works. Wendy McElroy sounds the alarm in an article in Foxnews titled, Will Universal Preschool Give All Kids a Head Start? and points to new studies that show otherwise:

[T]he DC-think tank Cato Institute observes, “The most comprehensive synthesis of Head Start impact studies to date was published in 1985 by the Department of Health and Human Services. It showed that by the time children enter the second grade, any cognitive, social, and emotional gains by Head Start children have vanished … The net gain to children and taxpayers is zero.”

McElroy also has this to say about government’s dangerous presumption:

This is the great danger: the presumption that government can raise children better than parents. If universal preschool is voluntary, then it may merely create another massive and ultra-expensive bureaucracy that accomplishes little.

If it is compulsory, then universal preschool will extend the government’s usurpation of parenthood so that all 3- and 4-year-olds are under state supervision.

I understand there is a place for preschool, but I certainly don’t see why the state should usurp the role of parents and take over their kids at such an early age or at any age. Compulsory preschool! This then is the bigger issue and it is utterly appaling to me. Is not the damage done to families by state-sponsored schooling already self-evident?

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Homefrontier » A child’s work is play Says:

31 March 2010 at 1:57 am.

[...] posts: My previous writings on the same topic- Preschool for a head start? Kicked out of kindy Life in the fast lane Finding [...]

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