Posted on 02/15/2013 10:54:22 AM PST by ExxonPatrolUs
It was one of the most cheering propositions in the president’s State of the Union Address: “Tonight, I propose working with states to make high-quality preschool available to every single child in America.”
The formulation, it’s true, is redolent of the ideological timidity of the “liberalism” of our age: instead of the federal government just doing something that’s good, it sets up unwieldy, confusing funding streams to have someone else do it instead. (Political scientist Steven Teles defines this as American federalism’s “kludegocracy”: “For any particular problem we [arrive] at the most gerry-rigged [sic], opaque, and complicated response.”) But all the same it’s a great goal for a president to get behind. As Obama went on to explain, “Every dollar we invest in high-quality early childhood education can solve more than seven dollars later on, by boosting graduation rates, reducing teen pregnancy, even reducing violent crime.”
The problem is, the White House might just be naïve enough to believe this is a relatively easy political sell. The breakthrough research on the payoffs to investment in “universal pre-K” was done by a Nobel Prize–winning economist named James Heckman, of the University of Chicago—and Heckman is, fundamentally, a prototypical University of Chicago economist, a neoclassicist. So it’s a “conservative,” market-based idea, right? Like cap-and-trade. Like the “individual mandate” in health insurance. So how could conservative Republicans object?
Right. You see where I’m going with this.
(Excerpt) Read more at thenation.com ...
This is just an extension of Project Head Start, which is a total failure.
There is not one comment that disagrees with the article.
Right when we should be cutting “social” spending, Hussein wants to spend more.
The guy is a walking disaster for America.
I’ve never felt so estranged from the mainstream. But of course this isn’t really “mainstream,” it’s just more simpering, bootlicking, stare worshiping sheepism. The very fact that conservatives think tanks and putatively “conservative,” but really rightwing progressive, intellectuals came up with cap and trade and the individual mandate shows you how stupid conservative intellectuals are. Even great figures like Milton Friedman, really a libertarian, stepped in it constantly and gave us worse government than we otherwise would have.
Somehow this is brought back around to us “wingnuts.” If relatively slight massive expansions of the central government are offered instead of the massive massive expansion this writer wants, we should jump at the chance. The assumption is always that what they want will happen, no matter what. Negotiation is over how much sugar we get to help the medicine go down. If you don’t want the medicine at all, well, you’re “outside the mainstream,” need not be listened to, are probably crazy, and deserve to be locked up, roasted alive in your bunker, or blown up by a robot.
Head Start: Can a Failed Program Ever Be Killed?
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/head_start_can_a_failed_program_ever_be_killed.html
Head Start: A $150 Billion Failure
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/01/15/head-start-a-150-billion-failure/
Failing Project Head Start Needs No More Funding
http://reason.com/blog/2013/02/11/head-starts-failure-needs-no-more-fundin
This is even worse. This is about attempting to make parents have even less influence on kids, and to start drilling the pro homosexual, pro feminist, pro secular humanist, liberal idiocy into kids heads as early as possible.
I have almost lost hope that anything short of the second American Revolution can save our country.
Never underestimate the arrogant self-affirmation of the enlightened intellectual left.
I had a seasoned school Principal tell me the biggest problem he has is not with bad or unintelligent students that didn’t go to Pre-K, but with teachers who every time they are questioned by a parent or the Principal himself march down to the office (with the union rep) and complain they only have to do the minimum the union contract mandates. Of course there are teachers that will go above and beyond but they’re becoming rarer and rarer.
Proud wingnut. I read to my kids from the day they came home from the hospital, sang and wrote the ABC’s a zillion times, taught the letter sounds, pointed to words as I read, counted out loud continually, used mathematical concepts, and on and on. Both my kids had started to read and could count by kindergarten.
The Shy Little Kitten was my daughter’s favorite to read.
Growing up in the south in the 50s, it wasn't called gerry-rigged.
I still like to read to my kids and they’re 7 and 11. They have their own books that they read, but they’ll still sit and listen to the old man. Last thing I read was The Hobbit.
We live in a relatively normal small town and I’ll admit my kids went to preschool, two half days a week as 3 year olds and 3 half days a week as 4 year olds. It was basically for them to get a little extra socialization, see how a school is structured and have some fun. They did a lot of neat programs on the holidays, and colored and learned shapes and letters and numbers. The parents ran the school, doing the janitorial duties, fixing things when they were broken,buying supplies, and paying the teachers. It was held in a building that parents raised the money for and renovated. It was about $80 a MONTH to send each kid there and we gladly payed, and any welfare recipient that drinks, smokes, has a computer or flatscreen could afford it to. I was at a headstart one day because they offered a speech therapist, which my daughter at the time was thought to need, and it was filthy, they did nothing to stimulate the kids, and little kids were being bullied by others right in front of the so-called “teachers†because there was no proper supervision. But, hey, it was a free government babysitter so the parents didn’t seem to care. We got our own Speech therapist and there was one on one interaction, it wasn’t government controlled, and wasn’t to expensive.
Now if you want to force the Government to pay for and teach your child their values and beliefs from cradle to grave, and pay billions for it when nothing is really accomplished, you may be a wingnut!!
Up here all the schooldistricts are offering free preschool and closing down many venerable and creative private preschools in the area.
Leftists extending territory.
This article reads like a DU post, and is hardly cogent, serious commentary. Unfortunate that it's treated as such.
“Political scientist Steven Teles defines this as American federalism’s “kludegocracy”: “For any particular problem we [arrive] at the most gerry-rigged [sic], opaque, and complicated response.””
Well, Stevie, that is the exactly our political system is supposed to work. It’s a feature, not a bug.
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