Posted on 12/21/2008 7:25:20 AM PST by reaganaut1
[T]he $10 billion Mr. Obama has pledged for early childhood education would amount to the largest new federal initiative for young children since Head Start began in 1965. Now, Head Start is a $7 billion federal program serving about 900,000 preschoolers.
“People are absolutely ecstatic,” said Cornelia Grumman, executive director of the First Five Years Fund, an advocacy group. “Some people seem to think the Great Society is upon us again.”
...
Now that new initiatives seem likely, experts are debating how best to improve America’s early childhood system, which they call fantastically fragmented, unconscionably underfinanced and bureaucratically bewildering. Some hesitate to use the word “system” at all.
“It’s a patchwork quilt, a tossed salad, a nonsystem,” said Libby Doggett, executive director of Pre-K Now, a group that presses for universal, publicly financed prekindergarten.
There are federal and state, public and private, for-profit and nonprofit programs. Some unfold in public school classrooms, others in storefront day care centers, churches or Y.M.C.A.’s, and still others in tiny centers run out of private homes.
“California has 22 different funding streams for child care and preschool, and that mirrors the crazy labyrinth of funding sources coming out of Washington,” said Bruce Fuller, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who is the author of “Standardized Childhood: The Political and Cultural Struggle Over Early Education.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
In a time of falling tax revenues, the govt will massively increase spending.
Uh, something wrong with that, just can’t put my finger on it.
Seemed like a good idea, but it didn’t work for me in my life. Just can’t figure out why not. Works for govt but not me me. Duh?
I think we all know the asnwer to that, and it isn't good
These aren't the children who need taxpayer-funded preschool.
The children who need it are those whose parents never read to them, never talk to them, perhaps regard them merely as additions to the welfare check, and are too busy with social life and drugs to pay much attention to the babies period.
Well run childrens' homes might be a better idea.
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Obama Says A Baby Is A Punishment
Obama: “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”
They want you kids earlier it seems. Head start has done crap if it was “needed” from 1965 to now. I’d tell Obama where to stick it.
Obama Pledge Stirs Hope in Early Education
Earlier indoctrination. Get those little minds “right” while they still can.
We have so-called “conservatives” here on Free Republic who **love** their child's government indoctrination camps.
Marxism is our nation's **most** serious threat and government K-12 schools are their **most** important weapon.
Unless conservatives get find free alternatives to get kids out of the government schools and destroy the government K-12 system or nation is doomed. ( I seriously mean it.)
It amounts to a fine on raising your own kids.
But hey! No problem! Just put ALL the little boys and little girls in the Little Hope Day Orphanage. It's Enightened. Compassionate. Progressive. It's the Obama-Patriotic thing to do.
Marxists want to indoctrinate children as early an age as possible, so they are prepared to take their place in the new system. Why should the biological parents have to teach their children when the government can do it better?
Homeschool!
#8 is wrong
I’m sure an answer like that would have gotten a passing grade too, lol
On the west coast, the currents bring water down from Alaska after moving up Russia, Bering Sea, etc.
On the East coast, the water is moving upward from the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. It's why hurricanes never get very far north on the West Coast.
Save the money. Let private enterprise take care of early childhood education.
The kids can start in kindergarten.
I didn’t know until a couple of weeks ago that many schools don’t teach cursive writing any longer. How are they supposed to read it if they can’t write it? Is everyone else supposed to start printing?! I’m still dumbfounded by that!
It may have been thought to have been accurate at the time with the measuring equipment that was available then.
Actually, time changes things, it may have very well been a fact a 100 years ago.
That being said, it really wasn't the reason I posted it to begin with. It illustrates that the kids were actually taught to think and learn as compared to what they are taught today, which is not much.
After all, despots wouldn't be able to control people who would question them and their intentions or logic, would they?
My grandmother was a whiz at math, and could multiply huge numbers in her head. She was appalled that my teachers wouldn't allow it.
"How the heck do they expect your brain to grow?" she'd rant.
Inversely, they no longer teach kids to "sound out" words to learn spelling.
That test was indicative of a much more complete education than what's offered now, or when I went to school.
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