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August 21, 2007
Educate Early and Often: School Daze
The World Congress of Families provides some statistics for these "back to school" days:
54% Percentage of 3- and 4-year-olds enrolled in school in October 2005.
70% Percentage of children enrolled in kindergarten who attended all day, as of October 2005.
Plus:
Among the extensive findings pulled together by institute president and early education authority Darcy Olsen, the most riveting is her observation that the huge expansion of early education since 1965 has not yielded rising outcomes of elementary school students. In 1965, only five percent of three-year-olds and 14 percent of four-year-olds were enrolled in pre-K programs. Today, those figures are 39 percent and 66 percent, respectively. Yet statistics from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show how fourth-grade reading, science, and math scores have stagnated since the early 1970s and in some cases fallen, even as the nation has tripled spending in education, increased teachers' salaries, and reduced class sizes. Nevertheless, even in these subject areas, American fourth-graders still outperform their peers in France, Italy, and Germany, countries that have the kind of universal pre-K system that some want here.
And today in Time (August 27, 2007) I read this:
Popular videos such as the Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby series have attracted millions of parents eager to give their babies an intellectual leg up. But a recent study shows that these products may be doing more harm than good. Experts at the University of Washington reported early in August that for every hour each day that infants watched the kaleidoscope of changing images and music on these DVDs, they understood an average of seven fewer words than babies who did not use such products.
That really should read than "babies whose parents did not subject them to such products." The parents--who spent $200 million last year on Einstein--are advised:
They might consider instead the advice of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recommends that infants under 2 not watch anything on a screen and just interact with their parents.
If there's not a shred of evidence that the billions of dollars spent to improve education by starting it earlier and earlier, why all this rush? Government officials and politicians seem to be the only ones who can get away with asking for and getting more money to invest in a product or program without showing that it really makes an important difference.
I would have not survived an all-day kindergarten. I hated half-day kindergarten as it was, and all-day first grade was torture. I learned nothing and hated it. And see where I ended up? I coulda been an Einstein!
Posted by James M. Kushiner at 11:38 AM | Permalink
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Studies show that basic character formation takes place by 3 or 5 (depending on which source) The educational establishment wants to do that forming, for the sake of reshaping society in an Alinsky-Gramskian mode. I've read the textbooks, I've heard the profs lecture.
Posted by: labrialumn | Aug 21, 2007 12:17:31 PM
What is the matter with parents that they cannot see what garbage it is to put their little children in school? Are they so befuddled by propaganda that they can't see what is in front of their faces? My husband remembers that when he was about three his parents put him in a day care center so his mother could work. He cried all day. His mother took him home and never took him back. I know that some children have that overt reaction and others react inside. What kind of parents can harden their hearts against their own children?
Posted by: Judy Warner | Aug 21, 2007 12:52:04 PM
I'm with Mr. Kushiner when it comes to early education. I think only one of my six boys (ex utero) would have adapted well to kindergarten. I have an eight year old who is only just know "getting" reading (and recognizing signs). He would have been miserable in schools. When I was in graduate school, I got to be friends with a postdoctoral fellow (Ph.D. in chemistry from University of Toronto, M.D. from McGill, now a full professor of biochemistry at Dalhousie) who confided that he didn't learn to read until he was 11 years old. I think elementary education is mostly a waste for most male children since they just aren't ready for that kind of structured environment. Let them learn and do useful things at home (as well as play, of course). Later on, when their brains are ready, they'll be able to learn it all fast enough. The public education system is catering to the supposed convenience of working parents--not their children.
Posted by: Gene Godbold | Aug 21, 2007 1:18:45 PM
Dear Mr. Kushner,
But I LOVED first grade! It was the only time in my life I've been the "teacher's pet". And look where I ended up.
Kamilla
Posted by: Kamilla | Aug 21, 2007 1:19:55 PM
Just to offer a slightly different perspective, before everyone starts going off uncharitably on all the bad parents who put their children in F/T pre-k and Kindergarten programs...I am a single mother who does not live near family, and who must work full time in order to pay the mortgage and feed my children. While I would rather be at home raising my own children, this is no longer an option for me. And while I had a fabulous nanny for their earlier years, the fact is that school is a better option for them than the alternative. Is it my preference? No. Do I regret this situation & feel guilty about it? Just about everyday. But frankly, some of us are grateful for these programs that give our children at least the opportunity to learn, and simulateously relieve a little bit of direct financial burden from an already otherwise tight pocketbook. Really, I'm doing the best I can here. Not everyone included in these statistics is necessarily voluntarily abdicating time with their children, or hoping to get a leg up on an Ivy League education.
Posted by: Alyssa | Aug 21, 2007 2:14:00 PM
Alyssa - Thanks for the reminder. There is a difference between grim necessity, and selfish indulgence - the difference between taking a bitter medicine, and snorting cocaine. Nobody intends to judge your emergency response to straitened circumstances - but I think that realistically, your category is not the one swelling the statistics.
Posted by: Joe Long | Aug 21, 2007 2:49:09 PM
Alyssa,
You are not the only one in that situation, and I feel for you and do not condemn you. But you state you would rather be home raising your children, so you realize what is best. I condemn those who have convinced themselves or allowed themselves to be convinced that their little children are really better off being in school all day.
And I also know that some children thrive in a nursery-school kind of setting. But very few thrive full-time. And even fewer thrive in the kind of situation in so many schools nowadays, where academic work has been pushed down from first grade to kindergarten to pre-school, so that instead of three- and four-year-olds playing, they are sitting down to worksheets and "educational" computer programs.
Posted by: Judy Warner | Aug 21, 2007 3:02:23 PM
Thanks Joe. I appreciate the compassion. To be honest, I do not know what is behind these numbers. They are vague and unsupported the way they are presented here on this blog ("54% Percentage of 3- and 4-year-olds enrolled in school in October 2005." Percentage of 3 & 4 year olds where? cities? rural areas? burbs? in public or private programs?) I am no expert on this. And as I have already stated, I have my own regretful reasons for being a part of these statistics. However, I have also lived in DC for 20 years now and worked in social services, and know that in places like this, full-time pre-K and K programs help meet the needs of other single parents, or even parents who are not able to meet some of the most basic needs of their children at home, including a hot meal. Having said that, I'm also not necessarily an advocate of schools taking over responsibilities of parents.
But I do have a hard time reconciling reality here in the city with the criticisms in some of these posts. To be honest, there are many children in my neighborhood who are frankly much better off in numerous ways because of these early ed programs than if they were left at home with their parent or guardian or child care provider. In these situations, in my opinion, both alternatives are sad, but at least one is potentially safe and provides the possibility of something positive happening in the child's life.
I'm just saying that the reality of urban areas may swell the statistics more than you might think.
And I'm just not sure that blasting all full-time early ed programs is really getting at the root of the problem in our society.
Sincerely,
Alyssa
Posted by: Alyssa | Aug 21, 2007 3:07:06 PM
Since 2004 the federal government has sent billions of dollars of aid to the city of New Orleans, yet the city is in demonstrably worse shape than it was in 2004. Why are we sending all that aid if there's not a shred of evidence that it does any good?
Posted by: Matthias | Aug 21, 2007 3:34:12 PM
Alyssa writes:
"Do I regret this situation & feel guilty about it? Just about everyday. But frankly, some of us are grateful for these programs that give our children at least the opportunity to learn, and simulateously relieve a little bit of direct financial burden from an already otherwise tight pocketbook. Really, I'm doing the best I can here. Not everyone included in these statistics is necessarily voluntarily abdicating time with their children, or hoping to get a leg up on an Ivy League education."
Alyssa, Do not feel guilty about it. Regre, which springs from your sense of what's best, may compel you, on the other hand, to pay more attention to your children than others who take them for granted. Someone who parks the kids in front of a TV at home isn't hardly at home with them in the more basic sense. The most important thing, I think, is the parental bond, the affection, the joy. There is a wonderful light that shines on the face of the child when gazing at the mother (you see this sometimes in the icons of the Blessed Virgin). Were I a politician I'd point to your situation as one in which some assistance makes a real difference from what would be the sitution otherwise. You obviously feel what's best. None of us can give what's very best, truly, but only the best that is within our means, and even there, we sometimes get in the way.
Posted by: Jim Kushiner | Aug 21, 2007 3:37:47 PM
Strikes me that this discussion has gotten off on a tangent--an interesting one, but not the point at hand. Here in Georgia, the state now funds a "free" pre-K program, and the public schools are pushing hard for a year-round school calendar to follow up on that. In other words, the government will take care of everybody's kids from age 4 up.
People are buying into it. I am amazed at the numbers of people who have no problem with packing off their little kids to an all-day program and sending their older ones "back to school" in July. It's certainly easier than raising your kids yourself, and I can't help but think that's the main reason people are going along with it.
Posted by: ron chandonia | Aug 21, 2007 4:31:07 PM
I homeschool my own kids and also do after-school, occasional before-school, and vacation care for the child of a friend of mine who's a single mother working fulltime to keep a roof over both their heads, so I'm not unsympathetic to the need for something to be out there during those work hours. I'm kind of glad to be the something, at least for this one child, whom my own children dearly love, as do I.
At the same time, I can't tell you how many times I've told other parents that I homeschool, to have them say -- well, one guy said, "You're crazy," which I imagine is what a lot of people maybe think, but he was a)refreshingly forthright, or b)in-your-face-rude enough to say. But many people say something along the lines of, "I could NOT spend that much time with my children." Which makes me want to ask why they had them, but that would be at least as rude as telling them they were crazy, so I don't.
Posted by: Sally | Aug 21, 2007 7:54:14 PM
Wow. I must be one of those odd children that thrived in all day kindergarten. Of course, it was every other day. I think the elementary school was experimenting with half day vs. whole day kindergarten that year, but only held the all day every other day to even things out. I really enjoyed kindergarten (then of course, I was reading long before I ever started school), I liked having something to do all day, and then have the next day where I could spend the whole time with my grandparents (my mother worked full time but we lived with my grandparents). It was kind of like having a weekend during the week.
I don't like the idea of putting my child (4 months to go until I can hold him/her in my arms!) in preschool when he or she gets to that age. I never went to pre-k and I turned out just fine (........grace gets distracted for a moment staring at the pretty lights out the window......).
Seriously, though, I'm very glad now I started school in kindergarten, not any earlier. My grandfather passed away when I was 6 and I realize now that I was lucky to be able to spend so much time with him when I was younger. Those are great memories.
Posted by: Isamashii Yuubi (Courageous Grace) | Aug 21, 2007 10:09:09 PM
When the nuclear family becomes fragmented and single parents are lone providers or when neither parents' jobs is located at home--when mothers have to work and can't take the kids and when fathers work away from home in jobs that their children can't accompany them to--what is the alternative for the kids except an ever-more-extensive childcare "situation," aka "school"? Used to be pretty common for at least one, if not both, parents to be at home, especially on the farm or in very small towns where the kids were fairly well integrated into the lives of their elders, but it just doesn't happen nowadays.
Posted by: Little Gidding | Aug 21, 2007 10:42:25 PM
Well, our situation is somewhat unique -- my wife, a physician, works an 80% schedule. Since our marriage, I have been laid off twice (in 1999 and 2002), and despite over 600 job applications, interviews, networking workshops, etc. since then, I remain unemployed -- which is just as well, since our son (b. 2001) and daughter (b. 2004) have severe handicaps. Somebody has to stay home to run them to doctors and therapists, and that would be me. I would love to be able to have a career, and my wife would love to stay home, but that will not happen and we all know it.
Both of them have gone to public school half-day pre-K programs since about age 2 1/2. These have actually been quite wonderful -- the teachers are great, they're seen by school district therapists, and they get to play with their peers (I wouldn't even attempt to arrange a playdate for 10!).
I think, in their case, the pre-K school experience has been very beneficial in terms of socialization -- it's very hard for handicapped kids to develop friendships. So in our case, I have no complaints about early schooling.
In addition, we've used Baby Enstein videos, and I think they're stupid and pointless -- it's just one random thing after another with tinny classical music to make the parents think that something Educational is going on. On the other hand, we've enjoyed and had great success with Signing Times instructional videos for American Sign Language -- it's taught my daughter, 3, with Down syndrome, a great deal of language -- she has an excellent signing vocabulary. And it works for her, because Down kids have great long-term memory and poor short-term memory -- so the repetition of watching a video over and over is exactly what she needs!
Posted by: Tragic Christian | Aug 22, 2007 1:34:11 AM
"Used to be pretty common for at least one, if not both, parents to be at home, especially on the farm or in very small towns where the kids were fairly well integrated into the lives of their elders, but it just doesn't happen nowadays."
It will never "just happen" because it never did "just happen"; it was a product of shared values and a more rational social organization, which we should strive to restore . And let's make clear the difference between Christian caring for the distressed (daycare for the victims of our social disintegration), and actual encouragement of destructive trends. Hospitals exist for the injured, but no one chooses hospitalization as a lifestyle and cites its "benefits": daycare ought to be viewed the same way. No matter how common the broken family and the "childcare situation" might be, let's remember that it is not and cannot be "normal".
Posted by: Joe Long | Aug 22, 2007 1:15:22 PM
Ah, at last a topic in which I can say something about. Mostly I just read and am amazed by others' comments. :-)
I am a teacher.... or at least, was a teacher. At our school, they jumped at the chance to make the bilingual half-day kindergarten into an all-day one, because they just needed more time to teach what's required. This is true especially because the kids all speak Spanish and need to learn English. The pressure is the tests that come up (high-stakes tests starting in third grade now in our state) and there's a lot of pressure. So the teachers and principals try lots of different things, and one of those things is to increase schooling time. A close-by district really promotes pre-schools, for the same reasons. Now, whether or not these work... well, I don't know that the statistics in this blog can really be conclusive. You would have to look at statistics of kids who were in the programs, versus kids who weren't, and control them for language, class, etc. Something else could have been happening our country during the time that this early education has increased to cause the lack of improvement in scores. As a bilingual teacher, I can think of an idea: LANGUAGE! At least in my district, when I went to school there, there were very very few kids who didn't speak English. Now over 50% of the kids speak Spanish at home.
Of course you'll then turn this into a debate about immigration, but whatever. The point is that when so many kids don't speak English when they enter school, OF COURSE they're going to do more poorly on the NAEP tests. It doesn't mean that we're not doing a good job teaching them; it doesn't mean that early childhood programs are harmful; it just means that our population has changed and is more challenging.
You'll notice how the statistics are measured at fourth-grade. That's not enough time for a monolingual Spanish (or other language --there are lots out there) to catch up.
Anyway, I'm just saying that those statistics do not prove anything about early childhood programs.
Now onto another topic brought up. I always thought when I grew up I really needed to have a fantastic career. Every once in a while my mom would say I could be a stay-at-home mom too, and I'd always dismiss it. Women got to work a lot now, and I was going to do something great!
Well, suddenly, something great is staying home with my 5 month old baby. :-D I'm thinking I want to homeschool too, but we'll see. I'm not sure my husband is convinced of that. But I'm certainly not farming her out to some program just because I can. I totally understand how lots of people might not be able to do this; we're just blessed that we can afford it.
Also, we got a pack of 20 Baby Einstein videos from my husband's bosses as a present. I did open them and put one in the computer just to see what it was like, but the baby didn't watch it. Maybe when she's two, for special occasions, but certainly not before.
Okay, there was my two cents. Carry on, carry on. :-)
Posted by: Katheryn Walker | Aug 22, 2007 1:21:12 PM
I had a slightly different experience, in that I was held back from kindergarten for a year because my birthdate fell three weeks after the cut-off. My mom tried to push to get me in, not to "hand me off," but because she thought I was ready.
Flash forward a few years and teachers were recommending I skip a grade, which I did (fifth). Despite the social trauma I did much better in the higher grade- I had been bored to tears by school. Mom was right all along. I also think it's not right to push small children too hard, but there isn't a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to education.
Posted by: Gina | Aug 22, 2007 1:48:13 PM
It's really odd how much money has to be spent on bi-lingual programs. My father and his siblings went to school from a Yiddish-speaking family and they all did well in school and became professionals. My mother's family spoke German at home; she never spoke anything else until she went to Sunday school at age 4, and she also did well in school and became an English teacher. I don't think non-English-speaking children nowadays are dumber than kids were back then.
Posted by: Judy Warner | Aug 22, 2007 1:48:39 PM
More about Baby Einstein, from this week's "Nature" magazine. The reporter is Daniel Cressey:
The Walt Disney Company is going toe-to-toe with the University of Washington in Seattle after a study by the university's researchers suggested that exposure to DVDs and videos for babies, including Disney's Baby Einstein, could be associated with poorer language development.One of the team, professor of paediatrics Dimitri Christakis, was widely quoted as saying "I would rather babies watch American Idol than these videos."
Robert Iger, Disney's chief executive, says the study's "methodology is doubtful, its data seem anomalous and the inferences it posits unreliable". In a letter to the university, he accused it of issuing a "deliberately misleading, irresponsible and derogatory" press release. "Whether your university is comfortable associating its name with analysis of this quality is, of course, your decision," he wrote. "And I would not be reaching out to you if all that was at stake was a poorly done academic study."
What is at stake is a million-dollar industry in such products for babies. A full set of Baby Einstein DVDs costs US$369.99. Baby Einstein packaging says it "is not designed to make babies smarter", but detractors claim such products are marketed as educational.
"Disney is expecting the brand to bring in $1 billion by 2010," says psychologist Susan Linn of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and a founder of the Boston-based Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, a group opposed to marketing to children. In May 2006 the campaign asked the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby of Alpharetta, Georgia, another leading manufacturer of baby videos, for "engaging in deceptive acts and practices". They were backed by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. The complaint is still being considered.
Linn sees the entire 'baby industry' becoming more litigious. "We can expect more of this kind of corporate intimidation," she warns. "Disney is on the defensive and they're going to come out swinging."
The study, published online earlier this month (F. Zimmerman et al. J. Pediatr. doi:10.1016/j.jpeds.2007.04.071; 2007), found that babies aged 8 to 16 months who watched such videos scored lower than other babies on the Communicative Development Inventory (CDI), a standard tool used to gauge language development in infants. Babies that watched an hour a day scored 17 points lower on the CDI scale — corresponding to knowing seven fewer words than a typical baby in the study who did not watch the videos, the researchers say.
Lead author Frederick Zimmerman suggests several explanations for their findings, including the fact that parents worried about their child's language development might turn to the videos. But "it is possible that heavy viewing of baby DVDs/videos has a deleterious effect on early language development," he says.
The study was press-released by his university under the headline "Baby DVDs, videos may hinder, not help, infants' language development". University president Mark Emmert has refused to retract the press release and says he stands behind the research. "The findings were considered significant enough to be reported in a major journal, and as a public institution we feel duty bound to make the public aware of these findings," he says.
Deborah Linebarger, an expert in child development and television at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, was asked by Disney to defend Baby Einstein to the FTC. Although believing such products can be useful, she declined. "I have concerns that anything called Baby Einstein, Genius, etcetera, is exploitive of a vulnerable population," she says.
Despite having "some methodological issues" with the paper, she says: "There are some valid conclusions in it that warrant additional research. I'm cautious, but it makes sense."
Nature 448, 848-849 (23 August 2007) | doi:10.1038/448848b; Published online 22 August 2007
Posted by: Gene Godbold | Aug 22, 2007 2:09:18 PM
Out here in California, the educational establishment has coopted the (infamous) tobacco settlement, funneling its enormous monies into the "First Five" program. Everywhere one looks, "First Five" is urging the enrollment of children into the State program at the earliest age -- not out of "needs" like Alyssa's, but because it's just BETTER. It's driving me crazy for a couple of reasons. First, from where I sit, it is an ideologically driven effort to control our children's formation from the cradle by the secular knowledge class. Second, few Christians (much less churches) are expressing any sort of meaningful critique of such movements.
What folks like Alyssa must consider is that this issue and debate isn't about a society reaching out to assist those who, like her, are in a pickle and need real help. They would like you to think that, I am sure. Rather, here are entire programs and massive amounts of money marshalled to bring all children out of the home and into their "programme." All this in the names of "helping" and "readiness." It is so easy to personalize the debate and fail to see the principles and dynamics involved. I have seen similar reactions in my community college writing class when we read and write about the trends of fatherlessness in our society. One may feel exposed, quite understandibly, in the course of such discussions. Personal insights are important, to be sure, but the broader dynamics of principle (family!) and policy cannot be trumped by anecdotes, IMHO.
I wonder: what would happen if they used all that money to assist families (whatever their configuration) to have one parent stay at home and actually be able to parent their children in these crucial years? How about facilitating the ELL (English Language Learner) parents so that the family "system" is able to function well in this nation?
Thank you, Mr. Kushiner, for raising the issue.
Posted by: Priest David Thatcher | Aug 22, 2007 3:46:25 PM
If you want to know the truth about Baby Einstein, just check out *these* products, which are apparently doing well....
www.themoviefordogs.com
www.bowwowtv.com
DVDs that your dog can watch all day while you're gone! I saw one at the grocery store and it just blew me away. I finally made the connection to Baby Einstien. :)
Have you heard the joke about the smartest dog in the world?
"How does sandpaper feel?" "Ruff!"
"What's on top of a house?" "Roof!"
"Who was the greatest ballplayer of all time?" "Ruth!"
The auditioner kicked them out. On the way home Rover remarked to his owner, "Maybe I should have said Jackie Robinson."
Posted by: Clifford Simon | Aug 22, 2007 4:06:25 PM
"Have you heard the joke about the smartest dog in the world?"
Sorry, Clifford, but that was arf-ful! ;-)
Posted by: Bill R | Aug 22, 2007 5:19:10 PM
I'm surprised Judy or Joe hasn't piped in that funneling money to these programs makes it less likely that single income families will survive because of the economic pressure resultant in the increased tax burden imposed from the transfer of income from single to double income families.
Father Thatcher is right about California. First Five receives an amazing amount of press. The common ad claims that if you don't send your children to preschool studies show that they will fail. The claim is implicit and the ad is careful to not make it explicit.
I am amazed by the number of *wealthy* parents where both parents work. Even worse is single income wealthy families where the kids still go to day-care to give the mom a "break".
Posted by: Nick | Aug 23, 2007 3:47:15 PM
The preschool/daycare system also acts as an enabler to destructive social trends. My mother "needed" full-time daycare/preschool for us kids at an early age, being a single mom; but she openly acknowledges that she left our father because she wanted to work full-time and he refused to put his kids in daycare so as to enable that. So she left him and became a single mom who "needed" subsidized daycare and preschool.
Certainly not all single moms are in that situation; I know plenty who went back to work when their husbands left *them*. But again, a man can feel better about leaving when he can tell himself that the kids have state-subsidized care so that his ex-wife can go work. The family courts can tell themselves the same, and so assume that an abandoned wife ought to go out to work because the state will care for the kids, and structure the divorce settlement based on that assumption.
When all parents working all day becomes the majority, it becomes the norm.
Posted by: anon. | Aug 25, 2007 9:32:43 AM
Folks, as many of you probably know, I'm an implacable opponent of school as it's currently constituted -- a colossal waste of time, or, to put it more criminally, a waste of childhood, a waste of life. If there were any evidence that could be squeezed and stretched into "proving" that early childhood "education" actually does a blessed thing, long term, to foster reading or ease in manipulating numbers or inquisitiveness into the natural world, we would certainly hear about it all the time, wouldn't we?
I'd ask everybody here to think again about what education really is for, and what life itself is for -- because almost everything of importance that you learn as a little child can hardly be measured, and certainly does not derive from some cobbled-together program in singing jingles or manipulating blocks. Unless we believe that our most cherished memories ought to be holding on to a rope out in the plasticene playground, lest one of the forgettable other toddlers in the group wander off from the forgettable "caregivers".
If you have to use one of these places, then you have to, and I'm not saying anything against that. Alyssa has no choice in the matter, and I'll surely take her word for it. But I'm not going to put a pretty face on daycare, either. No peace, no order, no solitude when you want it, no boisterous siblings or cousins or neighbors when you want that, no hanging around while ma or pa is working, no poking around a ditch or a field or a tree, no playing with the dog -- or no productive chores, no pitching in with the family business, nothing of that sort. Let's not fool ourselves. If daycare is at all like school, it is because school has come to resemble daycare too, and is itself largely a crime against innocence, imagination, industriousness, and plain old freedom. If we burned them all down tomorrow, what would be the real crisis facing us? Illiterate kids? Those we have already -- and there's a kind of higher illiteracy that it is the firm purpose of schools, including colleges, to produce. No, the real crisis would be in warehousing: all at once we'd be flooded with an inventory of shiftless children, with no place to stow them.
Posted by: Tony Esolen | Aug 25, 2007 11:19:39 PM
Anon., well said. If government schools seem to solve some problems, they are problems that the schools were instrumental in creating.
Dr. Esolen, as a fellow worker in what you so aptly call "the national swindle called higher education" ("Losing and Love," August 24), I appreciate your post above calling us to consider what life and education are for. Our Lord lived by watching what His Father did and imitating it. This was how He, though in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but humbled Himself. Adam, made in the image of God, gave up walking with God in the garden to grasp equality with God through knowledge. From the beginning God gave children not schools, but parents. He made us to learn to live by imitation, not education.
Posted by: Reid | Aug 27, 2007 10:25:57 AM
Ken Myers, producer and host of Mars Hill Audio, often seems to have (or to find) useful insights on education. For example, in his Vol. 78 comments introducing guest Mark Bauerlein, Myers quotes from a series of lectures given by Marion Montgomery in 1987:
"Education is the preparing of the mind for the presence of our common inheritance: the accumulated and accumulating knowledge of the truth of things."
"The proper end of formal education is to establish in the individual person virtuous habits of thought—a recovery of those habits of thought proper to mankind by the nature of his being."
"The academy has as its chief responsibility the stewardship of mind through words."
Posted by: Susan | Aug 27, 2007 12:09:27 PM
I've just finished reading Kay Hymowitz's Marriage and Caste in America and I wonder if the statistics in the original post (all that early education effort, no results) is due just to the underclass? I mean, perhaps early education is effective for stable, two parent households where mom stays home; but it won't overcome the handicaps inherent in an underclass household with only one parent.
If so, that'd just make Hymowitz's point all the more alarming: that we're fast creating a society where the middle and upper classes keep pulling away from the poor and underclass and if education doesn't help, there's no way for them to catch up.
[Note: This is not to say I support public school education. I'm a coach at a local public high school (also my alma mater) and while it's not the absolute last place I'd send my child, it's right there in the running. My wife and I are considering homeschooling or our (RC) parish school.]
Posted by: Occasus | Aug 27, 2007 11:48:02 PM
Occasus brings up an excellent point. Between the overrating of college -- the use of college as a "license" for hiring for jobs that have nothing to do with a college education -- and the government-driven downgrading of a working man's wages (because the difference between those, especially when he's young, and what a woman with a child can get from welfare is pretty small, or is even in welfare's favor), the gap between the well-off and the not-so-well-off is bound to grow. Add to this the habit of doubling up full-time professional incomes in a single household, driving up housing prices, or allowing the full-time pros to live nowhere near people without a college education ...
Posted by: Tony Esolen | Aug 28, 2007 8:10:08 AM
In my Southern city, where the educational climate is particularly dismal, I'd say the situation is at least one part the underclass's consciously pulling away from the upper and middle classes to two parts anything else. No, now that I think about it, I've got the ratio backwards.
Race politics has a lot to do with the problem, at least here. My husband teaches as an adjunct in a small local college whose curriculum is constantly being not only dumbed down, but "urbaned down," too, on what to me seems the insulting premise that black ghetto youth can understand nothing but the black ghetto experience. In our local theological seminary, where he has also taught, you can take one semester of church history to three semesters of African-American homiletics. So, if it's Tuesday, that must have been St. Athanasius you saw in the rearview mirror -- but now on to the really important stuff, which is all happening right now, where you live, to you.
And here's an early-education tidbit from my local paper of late: the county government (we have two, City and County -- two governments, two school systems, one great . . . um . . . ) recently voted not to re-award a contract to operate a Head Start program to a private children's-welfare organization, which had already been running centers with good results (on a relative scale), because the president and CEO of the organization are white and therefore incapable of providing "culturally sensitive" education to the majority-black children who populate Head Start programs here.
Of course I don't mean to make an automatic correlation between "black" and "underclass." Here in the poorest urban county in America, we just happen to have an enormous underclass which is overwhelmingly black. And their political leadership seems committed to maintaining that underclass as an underclass, at the expense of even dubious educational benefits, not to mention some real ones at the higher levels.
On the whole, I think it's probably true that by the time a child is 3 or 4, there's not much even the best of programs can do to overcome the fact that his mother hasn't ever in his life addressed him in a complete sentence.
Posted by: Sally | Aug 28, 2007 8:13:53 AM
On government jobs and payment. Federal schedules for contract work pay far, far more for folks with a bachelor's degree even when decades of relevant experience are involved. But once you reach the bachelor's level, additional education counts for little. That is, on the schedule with which I'm most familiar (professional engineer/scientist), a Master's Degree counts for two years of experience while a Ph.D. counts for just four years of experience. My Ph.D. buddies and I look at these things and laugh since the average time for such a degree is close to six years (if you aren't an engineer). Now, in most cases, I would agree that four (or six) years of experience in a job is probably more helpful than a freshly minted Ph.D. but I think for the technical jobs that we do, a Ph.D and two years of experience is a better deal than eight years of experience.
That said, a person who isn't academically gifted but has a good character and work ethic could do a lot worse (financially) than being apprenticed as a plumber, electrician, or carpenter. The hours can be long and the work can be hard, but you can make a rewarding living and learn enough within a decade to start your own business. And owning one's own business is a better route to wealth than most other jobs.
Posted by: Gene Godbold | Aug 28, 2007 1:08:25 PM
"That said, a person who isn't academically gifted but has a good character and work ethic could do a lot worse (financially) than being apprenticed as a plumber, electrician, or carpenter."
Not to mention a person who IS academically gifted, but interested in actually making money...!
Posted by: Joe Long | Aug 28, 2007 2:09:38 PM
I was just looking around the NEA website for their take on pre-school. Of course they are heavily in favor of it and believe that it should be public (i.e., run by the government using tax money), not private. They claim tremendous benefits to society from preschool programs (though troublingly many of the benefits are measured in dollars).
They list some "research" that they claim justifies universal pre-school. Reading through the descriptions of the samples (roughly 100-120 children divided into treatment and sample groups of roughly equal sizes) and how they were chosen (in their two "premier" studies, the High/Scope Perry Preschool Project and the Abecedarian Preschool Intervention Project), it strikes me that that all the children were poor and 99% of them (literally) were black. It appears likely that the vast majority were being raised by young, poorly educated single mothers or in other families in far from ideal situations.
The treatment children received preschooling (in one case for ages 3-4, in the other from infancy to entering kindergarten, I think) from people who, as best I can tell, were specifically part of the project. That is, they were not simply employees trying to earn a living by teaching young children. The control-group children were a control group only in the sense that they did not take part in the treatment program under investigation. The Abecedarian program says specifically that a number of their control-group children attended other preschools and daycares, sometimes at the recommendation of the Abecedarian researchers.
In both studies the treatment-group children seem, on average, to come out quite a bit ahead of the control-group children, but even taking this at face value it hardly makes an argument for universal preschool. The NEA seems to want to say that preschool is better for children than staying home. What the studies say, at most, is that within a small subset of the children born into badly broken families and into some of the most difficult circumstances that our society has to offer, those who went through a program set up by zealous researchers for a short period of time gained some benefits over those who went through whatever other preschool and living arrangements their single mothers (and other caregivers) were able to arrange. It is preposterous to try to treat such "research" as evidence (much less proof) that large-scale state-run preschool programs, employing large numbers of career teachers who are even less capable than the average elementary school teacher, subject to the whims and politics of state and federal educational bureaucracies, will be similarly advantageous for children of more nearly normal families. It does not even argue that such programs will benefit children like those in the studies.
I think of the studies that led to legislation mandating third brake lights on American cars. Evidently in the initial studies the third brake light reduced auto accidents tremendously. In the real world, however, the reduction was tiny. It seems that the reduction in the studies was largely due to the novelty of the third light. Once everyone had them, the novelty wore off and the benefits nearly vanished.
Ultimately science and statistics are unable even to address, much less answer, questions of morality and the nature of man. These we learn, perhaps in part from natural law, but ultimately through God's revelation. God made man in families. He commanded children to honor their parents and fathers to love their children. This, not school, is God's recipe for raising children. For a state to impose something else is both tyranny and folly.
Posted by: Reid | Aug 28, 2007 3:02:21 PM
The High/Scope Perry Preschool Project took place decades ago. That they are still citing it as one of two premier studies speaks volumes. It was, as Reid says, completely untypical of pre-school programs in the real world, being rather a hothouse variety with a great deal of work in the homes of the children in addition to the pre-school. In spite of all that, I believe the gains did not last more than a few years.
Posted by: Judy Warner | Aug 28, 2007 3:49:58 PM
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