They'd learn that socialized medicine doesn't work for very long. They'd learn that letting in too many immigrants from Muslim countries isn't a very good idea--and leads to the very rape culture they fantasize exists at US university campuses. And they'd learn that universal pre-Kindergarten doesn't solve society's ills, but creates more:
A scathing report, highlighted in the UK Daily Mail, details the findings of the Institute of Economic Affairs regarding Britain’s universal free childcare program. The bottom line: researchers have concluded that a government-funded, government-mandated universal daycare and pre-K program has done nothing more than bankrupt the middle class while failing to serve the country’s poor. What’s worse, government involvement has led to excessive regulation that not only drives up programming costs, but limits parental choice when it comes to how they would like to care for and educate their own children...*sigh*
The statistics should come as no surprise to concerned Americans following the push for universal pre-K on this side of the pond. In 2013 the Wall Street Journal published an analysis that determined universal pre-K had “negligible educational value,” while being “massively expensive.” Politicians push the idea based on studies showing the “value” of Pre-K in the short-term while ignoring the long-term. The reality is that low-income children who receive the immediate benefit of preschool education still wind up behind the game academically because they lack the necessary support at home to sustain education benefits into the future.
The true intention of citing the studies is to distract from the fact that universal pre-K has nothing to do with education and everything to do with providing glorified daycare services so that parents can go to work. Two-income families would be required in order to pay for universal childcare programming. In other words, it wouldn’t matter if a mother or father believed in or wanted to stay at home with their preschool aged children. Under federally regulated preschool, they wouldn’t have a choice. Both parents would be forced to work full-time just to generate the tax dollars that would pay for the program. Hence, as the British researcher above noted, universal pre-school legislation not only tells mom and dad to get back to work, but takes over parent decision-making as well.
Those pushing PreK were hoping it would morph into subsidized daycare. And that is the problem. From what I read in a Dallas ISD study, parents treated it like daycare which meant sometimes the kids would show up, sometimes they wouldn't. Parents would schedule vacations or long term absences during the school year, but because the parents considered it daycare, and free at that, they didn't mind if their children missed. What is more, these classes ended up being aimed at mainly children of color because only the most disabled white kids can even get on a waiting list. Ask any single Mom who has tried.
ReplyDeleteSimilar studies demonstrated how Headstart programs misused money, often hiring unqualified teachers and aides who were families and friends. This is a situation that has also dogged the checkered history of charter schools. But in the end, make no mistake, this was a blatant attempt to create a Scandinavian style social safety net that would both give parents paid leave and give them free childcare....eventually.
It's about virtue signaling rather than results. It's important to be SEEN as doing the right thing...whether it works or not.
ReplyDeleteI myself am a proud graduate of the Headstart program, back when it was still a new thing. Did it help?
I doubt it. I bet that having a stay-at-home mother who cared, and read to her kids, was the difference. We weren't rich, either, and we lived in a nowhere town up in the far northeast of California (find Alturas on the map).
I learned to read before Kindergarten because my older brother (2 years older) brought home stuff. We always had books around the house, and mom and dad both read all the time.
It's not about class, or race, but culture.
My relatives in Norway and Switzerland seem much happier than my
ReplyDeleteAmerican neighbors. Poor Europeans.
BB-Idaho:
ReplyDeleteBy some measures that might be true.
Of course, both of those countries are pretty non-diverse, mono-cultural 1st world countries. Ask them how well those Middle Eastern and African refugee / immigrants are assimilating into their countries.
As for Norway, when the oil runs out, then what? Where's all that sweet money for the social programs coming from then?