Schools Are Not Social Service Centers... yet.
The argument runs like this: kids do better in school when they’re well fed, healthy, and so forth. Therefore schools should be transformed into social-service centers that will not only teach students, but also provide health care and lots of other services. Schools would be open all day and provide a wide variety of community programs.
This will, of course, cost a ton of money and entail a huge expansion of the government educational bureaucracy. Which has nothing to do with why the unions want it.
Read the whole thing and check out the links and comments, like this one:We seem to be about one generation away from parents being required to turn their children permanently over to the government full-time at age 3.
I often wonder what life will be like for my kids as parents. Will they have the freedoms their dad and I have to raise them the way we think we ought? Will they even live in the US or will they have to go someplace where they can be free? And where would that be?
And from the Wall Street Journal: Protect Our Kids From Preschool
Our understanding of the effects of preschool is still very much in its infancy. But one inescapable conclusion from the existing research is that it is not for everyone. Kids with loving and attentive parents -- the vast majority -- might well be better off spending more time at home than away in their formative years. The last thing that public policy should do is spend vast new sums of taxpayer dollars to incentivize a premature separation between toddlers and parents.
Unless separating toddlers from their parents (specifically, the parents' philosophy and beliefs) is the goal...
Homeschooling is not for everyone, but even people who use public schools should be afraid of the mission creep of the education system.
4 comments:
"And where would that be?"
That would be New Zealand.
Reminds me vaguely of several "Utopia"-type books I read back in high school... the idea of just turning our children over to the government at age 3, that is.
Both my kids have said, if they become parents someday they will homeschool their kids. I really hope they get that chance.
Does anyone have any Soma? I'm getting low.
I worked in social services for about 10 years. While there were a few good people, overall they were the most pathetic group of people I've ever worked with. Most of them can't effectively manage their own lives, let alone someone else's.
About 20 years ago I read in a parenting magazine that young kids (toddlers) who simply follow their parents around and "help" the parent do things learn more than toddlers who get formal education in pre-school.
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