define social development.
Blanket universal pre-school isn't the answer. There are other variables - the child, the teacher, the particular pre-school, the parents, the family, hours per week, etc.
The point is they weren't home with their families.
That seems counter-intuitive; how can earlier social mixing hurt social development?
Pre-school is more about government-funded childcare, and easing the consciences of working mothers, than it is about child development.
This is a DUH moment for the Berkeley crowd.
Maybe the stay-at-home kids have rules, boundaries, and limitations, and parents who give them more than 15 minutes per day? Maybe they don't get hauled around like sacks of potatoes and dumped at the most convenient place?
In other news, ice salesmen unamimously say that cold is good for you.
Maybe it's just me, but that sounds sinister as hell.
Basically, all of these things have little to do with the ultimate educational and career acheivement of kids. In Finland, which is thought to have one of the best educational systems in the world, most kids don't even start school until they are 7.
The real issue here is parents wanting free day care.
Gee, just maybe early years spent at home with Mom, and Dad after work, are best after all? I'm sure the feminazis are busily stirring the pot scrambling to find or create new studies to support their agendas...
"...Hollywood movie director Rob Reiner leads a group of universal preschool advocates pushing for a June 2006 ballot measure ..."
Reiner wants a state run indocterination program with values teaching vetted by the Hollywood left.
PUKE!
dung.
We have little kids, and associate with a number of people with little kids, and they all want universal pre-school. Why? To a person, it's because they want the free day care so momma can work and they can have enough money for all their toys.
My four-year-old son is already reading simple books and is learning basic mathematics without the benefit of certified teachers. We are home schooling our children. Mom stays home with the kids and we struggle financially (especially these past few months!) but we feel our children are more important to us than many material things we're lacking that the neighbors have.
Whenever children get together in large groups with minimal or nonjudgmental supervision, they sink to the lowest common denominator ("Lord of the Flies" effect). That's why behavioral problems increase. The cognitive skills increase is because you're comparing the kids in preschool to random samples of non-preschooled kids. Filter out the bad or indifferent parents of non-preschooled kids and I'd bet you'd see no difference (in other words, and home school studies have borne this out, parents can teach kids these cognitive skills as well as, or better than, certified public-school teachers).
My son's cousin went to an all-day preschool and now attends kindergarten in a public school (the same one my son would attend next year if we were to send him) and is now (2 months into the school year) coming home and making rap music sounds and coming out with gang-banger slang expressions. Too bad my son's missing out on all that "socialization" isn't it? He plays with other home-schooled kids who are also aren't exposed to cultural trash.
Jedi preschool?
later read...
Universal preschool
They are trying to indoctrinate our children at a younger age. The appeal for working parents is "free childcare". I hope to God this doesn't pass.
This is an amazing statement, for one brief moment, a leftist pulls off the mask and admits they are willing to hurt middle class kids so that they will be more equal in result to poor kids.
I was lucky enough that we could keep our kids at home until Kindergarten. We did go over the basics with them but my children did take the first half of the school year to catch up with the rest of the children. I think it frustrated the teacher more then it did us. However they never ever had complaints about behavioral problems.
Daughter has been home with my wife since the day she was born (she's 5 now). No social problems whatsoever - she also reads at a 2nd grade level and does 1st grade math.
Day care, ezpecially government-funded daycare, is a detriment to children, I don't care what any study says. Parents are to raise their children, not $8 an hour babysitters.
My advice to parents with kids in daycare is to cut whatever isn't vital out of your budget, and have one of you stay home with the young-un. Everyone will be better off for it in both the short and long term. Sacrifice the 2nd car, the vacations, even the morning coffee - your kids' safety and well-being are more than worth it.
http://www-gse.berkeley.edu/program/CD/Faculty/Starkey.html
Any funds here?