Free Republic

Imagine a drug that could enhance a child’s creativity, critical thinking and resilience. Imagine that this drug were simple to make, safe to take, and could be had for free. The nation’s leading pediatricians say this miracle compound exists. In a new clinical report, they are urging doctors to prescribe it liberally to the children in their care. What is this wonder drug? Play. “This may seem old-fashioned, but there are skills to be learned when kids aren’t told what to do,” said Dr. Michael Yogman, a Harvard Medical School pediatrician who led the drafting of the call to arms....

A number of angry parents are considering legal action after a charter school kindergarten teacher staged what one critic calls a transgender “transition ceremony” in class for a five-year-old boy without informing parents beforehand. But Rocklin Academy Schools has countered that it didn’t have to tell parents about the transgenderism lesson that has left a number of five-year-olds shaken and disturbed. Because gender identity isn’t sex education, the administration said, it's not subject to California’s parental consent and opt-out laws, reported Fox40News. Moreover, with gender identity and gender expression prohibited grounds for discrimination in the state, not to accept a...

How young is too young to introduce a child to the concept of gender identity? That is a question the Rocklin Academy Schools district tried to handle after a young student revealed herself as transgender. Some parents applauded the district's efforts while others questioned whether it was handled properly. Ankur Dhawan's 5-year-old daughter was in the classroom that day. She came home and talked about what she learned. "She said, 'Well, we learned about a girl in a boy's body,'" Dhawan said. "This turned out to be a fairly decent way of introducing a topic that I wouldn't otherwise know...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSo5gzJ1M1s

A new directive from Israel's Education Ministry calls on preschool teachers to stop referring to "Mom and Dad" in preschool activities. The staff at the pro-LGBT Hoshen Organization, which offers training to preschool staff on the subjects of gender and sexual identity, has suggested Israeli preschool teachers speak about "parents" instead of "Mom and Dad." "It's worth remembering that there are many preschool children who come from non-traditional families. They may have two fathers, two mothers, two sets of parents, or LGBT parents who live separately and each has his or her own relationship," Hoshen explained. "Don't assume that every...

“We’re looking to create the confidence that when these kids go into predominately white schools that they can bring counter narratives to the school,” said Gore in an interview with King5 News. The two teachers say that that preschool education must go beyond singing songs and reading picture books. Instead, they plan to carry the discussion of race and racism all throughout the course of the children’s time at the preschool. The curriculum will include telling “the stories that are untold” and the earnest teachers will strive to actively change whatever pre-existing biases the children might have.

A playground in Missouri is becoming a political minefield. "Only one religious freedom case is currently before the Supreme Court this upcoming term: Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Pauley," the Alliance for Defending Freedom (ADF) notes. "Trinity Lutheran is a case about a religious preschool that was rejected from a state program that provides reimbursement grants to purchase rubberized surface material (tire scraps) for children’s playgrounds." "The preschool was ultimately denied the grant for its playground solely because the playground belongs to a religious organization." The ADF is a national network of lawyers who undertake religious liberty cases. The...

The former executive director of a former Head Start program in Jersey City Tuesday admitted that he diverted more than $250,000 from programs for underprivileged children and used the money for personal expenses, including a Maserati and a mink coat, prosecutors said. Robert E. Mays, 38, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Susan D. Wigenton in federal court to one count of wire fraud. According to court papers charging him, Mays in 2013 forged records and duped employees at the Jersey City Child Development Centers into believing that its board of directors had raised his salary 61 percent to $155,000...

...After “Sesame Street” was introduced, children living in places where its broadcast could be more readily received saw a 14 percent drop in their likelihood of being behind in school. Levine and Kearney note in their paper that a wide body of previous research has found that Head Start, the pre-kindergarten program for low-income Americans, delivers a similar benefit.The researchers also say those effects probably come from “Sesame Street’s” focus on presenting viewers with an academic curriculum, heavy on reading and math, that would appear to have helped prepare children for school.While it might seem implausible that a TV show...

Even Mother Teresa might have been tempted by this kind of property bonanza. A group of nuns wants to boot 55 tots from one of the city’s oldest preschools so they can cash in on the facility’s $20 million Chelsea real estate, according to a lawsuit by fuming parents. More than 50 moms and dads of kids at Nazareth Nursery Montessori claim the Sisters of St. Francis — who bought the West 15th Street facility for $5,000 in 1901 — want to sell the school’s two brick brownstones and hoard the money. “It's clear that the defendants plan to close...

Thousands of parents nationwide are up in arms over a law that makes it mandatory to send all children from age 32 months to pre-nursery schools that are either state operated or state-approved, starting this year. The law has existed on paper since 1984, but only enforced for ages 5 and up. Following the recommendations filed by the Trajtenberg Committee, which was formed following the massive leftist-organized “social justice” protests of 2011, it was decided to enforce it for ages 3-4. It conforms with leftist ideals of collective education in state institutions, with the nuclear family taking a back seat....

Even preschoolers are getting suspended from U.S. public schools—and they're disproportionately Black, a trend that continues up through the later grades. Data released March 21 by the Education Department's civil rights arm finds that Black children represent about 18 percent of children enrolled in preschool programs in schools, but almost half of the students were suspended more than once. Six percent of the nation's districts with preschools reported suspending at least one preschool child. Advocates have long said that get-tough suspension and arrest policies in schools have contributed to a "school-to-prison" pipeline that snags minority students, but much of the...

A California preschool teacher is facing felony charges after she allegedly drugged toddlers with a sleep aid. KTVU reports 59-year-old Deborah Gratz was arrested on child endangerment charges after she was fired from her job at the Kiddie Academy preschool in Morgan Hill. A witness told authorities they observed Gratz putting an unknown substance into the drinking cups of the children in her classroom, who range in ages 1 to 2. Police say when administrators confronted Gratz, she admitted putting an over-the-counter sleeping aid "Sominex" into the kids' drinks. None of the children drank from the cups the day the...

Here's the link.

Proponents of President Obama’s universal prekindergarten proposal make a strong case for the potential benefits of such a plan. Studies of about 100 low-income kids enrolled in two pricey and intensive preschool projects in the 1960s and 1970s found the children, while not experiencing any permanen IQ improvement, developed life skills that meant they were more likely as adults to hold a job, own a home, and stay out of jail than counterparts in a control group. More recently studies of broader, statewide pre-K programs, particularly in Oklahoma provide some further evidence of effectiveness, though the results are certainly not...

Head Start, a preschool program for low-income kids has been a spectacular success, not for kids, but for teachers and teachers' unions. Please consider Miami-Dade County seeks to unload Head Start program, salaries For more than four decades, Miami-Dade County officials have managed Head Start, the storied preschool program for children from low-income families. But the county now wants out — and “generous” salaries are partly to blame. On average, Miami-Dade paid its Head Start teachers $76,860 in salary and fringe benefits in 2011, county records show. That’s about 90 percent higher than the second highest-paying Head Start provider in...

... [A group of university researchers] examined the life paths of almost 12,000 children who had been part of a well-known education experiment in Tennessee in the 1980s. The children are now about 30, well started on their adult lives. On Tuesday, Mr. Chetty presented the findings — not yet peer-reviewed — at an academic conference in Cambridge, Mass. They’re fairly explosive. Just as in other studies, the Tennessee experiment found that some teachers were able to help students learn vastly more than other teachers. And just as in other studies, the effect largely disappeared by junior high, based on...

So what’s the biggest threat to religious liberty? According to J. Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, the answer is found in the strings attached to government funding of religious activity. Earlier this month, during a speech for the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, Walker said, “What the government funds, it always regulates. Government-sponsored religion is always bad for religion. How can we raise a prophetic fist with one hand and take government money with the other?” The truth of Walker’s statement was underscored just last week when the Washington State House of Representatives passed HB...

Initiative Focuses on Early Learning Programs SAM DILLON September 19, 2009 Tucked away in an $87 billion higher education bill that passed the House last week was a broad new federal initiative aimed not at benefiting college students, but at raising quality in the early learning and care programs that serve children from birth through age 5. The initiative, the Early Learning Challenge Fund, would channel $8 billion over eight years to states with plans to improve standards, training and oversight of programs serving infants, toddlers and preschoolers. The Senate is expected to pass similar legislation this fall, giving President...

Tucked away in an $87 billion higher education bill that passed the House last week was a broad new federal initiative aimed not at benefiting college students, but at raising quality in the early learning and care programs that serve children from birth through age 5. The initiative, the Early Learning Challenge Fund, would channel $8 billion over eight years to states with plans to improve standards, training and oversight of programs serving infants, toddlers and preschoolers. The Senate is expected to pass similar legislation this fall, giving President Obama, who proposed the Challenge Fund during the presidential campaign, a...