Universal pre-K is bad for everyone
In his last State of the Union speech President Obama proposed that we have universal preschool in the US. It’s appalling to me that he wants to pour money into preschool programs that are so out of sync with what families need.
Women have been very vocal about not wanting to work full-time while they have kids. And we have recognized as a nation that our school system is out of date and a waste of time for kids. So why are we dumping money into an institution that does not meet anyone’s needs?
Women don’t want a preschool system.
Most women want to stay home with their kids or work part-time. But some women don’t have enough money to do that and they need to work full-time. Other women who can afford to work part-time have huge difficulty finding rewarding, engaging part-time work because most of the exciting work in our economy is full-time.
Women going back to work full-time is not good for the kids when the women themselves feel they are gone from the kids for too much time. But women working part-time is good for young kids for a wide range of reasons.
This means that universal preschool does very little for working women. It doesn’t allow women to work full-time, because preschool isn’t full-time, and it doesn’t provide part-time jobs for women who want them.
Preschool does not help most kids.
Kids with educated parents do not need to go to preschool. So preschool primarily benefits kids with uneducated parents. Preschool can help those kids start out on equal footing with kids of educated parents.
Children who have educated parents should be playing when they are preschool age. They learn through play. They do not need to learn to sit still and stand in line and play only when the teacher says play.
The idea that kids should learn to read, write, and add when they are very young has been thoroughly disproven, and in fact, this sort of structured evinronment is so bad for boys that it puts them on an early path to being labeled low performers. This is why the rich don’t even bother with preschool—they know their kids will be fine without it. And almost all the research to support preschool is based on lower-income statistics, like preschool keeps kids out of prison.
Kids want to be with their parents when they are young, and given the choice, 84% of women would rather be home with their kids than work full-time. The universal preschool proposal ignores the needs of both these constitutent groups.
We do need good childcare.
What everyone wants is good childcare. That’s why they send their kids to school – because school is our state-funded babysitting system. Parents who are home with their kids want to have a break from their kids. Parents depend on school to provide that break from parenting duties, but we have no system for giving parents breaks when kids are not school age.
At best, universal pre-K is a babysitting service. Middle-class parents can’t afford good child care, which Obama says in his speech, and he says that preschool is a childcare solution more than an education solution. The real issue here is that he wants to give good childcare to the parents who want it.
That’s really different from saying that all kids should go to school.
The Harvard Business Review cuts to the chase and goes so far as to say that this discussion is not about school. It’s about whether kids are better off having early child care from a family member or a preschool. You have to have a pretty bad family life to think that a stranger, with a 15 to 1 ratio, is better child care for a young child than a mother or father.
Universal pre-K is a throwback to pre-1970s feminism.
Feminist site Jezebel also goes straight from universal pre-K to universal child care, pointing out that more women can work. Which would be a useful discussion if it weren’t that most women with kids do not want to work full-time. But we know they don’t.
Bryce Covert, writing at Forbes, says, “Working parents, particularly the mothers who still do the majority of care work for young children, can’t be expected to take three years out of their careers to stay home with young children until they’re ready for preschool.”
WHAT? We know that kids benefit tremendously from being home with a single caregiver during this period. We know that most women cannot earn enough money to pay for quality childcare, which they would still have to pay for if they had full-time jobs.
Putting universal pre-K on the table is taking away the very idea of choice that women have been fighting for. Women should have a choice to work or stay home with kids. Women should be able to choose parenting. Today we raise girls to think they are in school expressly to get a job that is not parenting. That’s as damaging to girls as telling them they are going to school to stay home and have kids.
We do not need our politicians to use their federal funding to denigrate the job of parenting any more than so much of society already does.
We need to acknowledge that school is a waste of time.
This country is already an absolute mess because we funnel kids through an education system for fifteen years to get to a college system that is a ponzi scheme. Even the research that supports preschool concludes that an all-around lousy school system undermines the positive impact of preschool.
We need to admit that kids do not need to go to our schools to be educated. One of the largest education trends is middle class parents taking kids out of school. The most expensive private schools model a homeschool environment because kids can learn through self-directed exploration. They don’t need school.
Middle class parents recognize this and don’t want their kids to suffer through an antiquated education system that was established to educate kids to be factory workers.
Obama is pouring more money into the idea that kids need to be in classrooms in order to learn. In fact, kids learn better outside of classrooms. We already know this, we just don’t have the money to fund it.
Focus on deadbeat dads instead of universal pre-K.
Here is my proposed solution. First, promote marriage. Yes, it’s judgmental and pushing cultural values onto individual citizens. But so is universal pre-K. Marriage, however, is much more successful at giving kids a good chance in life: keeping a marriage together decreases the chance of a child living in poverty by 80%.
And let’s go after deadbeat dads. The majority of low-income kids are not living with their dad. I do not believe that low-income moms are different than high-income moms; I think l0w-income moms also would choose to be home with their kids over working full-time.
New York City increased the amount of child-support collected by 50% in the last ten years. We can use the same tactics across the country. This will help low-income kids get out of the low-income bracket, and then they won’t have to go to preschool or any school. (It’s possible, really: The Economist reports that the average income of a family with a stay-at-home parent today is no more than those same families had in the 1970s, on one income.)
School in the US is for poor kids. Underprivileged kids are the kids who have to sit through standardized tests when they should be playing. The movement in this country to get kids out of the standardized tests is solidly middle-class. Let’s have universal protests about the stupidity of school instead of universal pre-K. Let’s enable lower-income kids to have the benefit of being told their time is too precious to sit in school all day.
In light of the overwhelming evidence that kids and parents are better off without preschool, let’s use the funding for universal pre-K to help parents create safe, stable environments where they stay home with their four-year-old kids.
I’m on board with all of it. But, what is the proposal? Beyond going after deadbeat Dads, what would it look like for the government to help Moms stay home with their children before preschool?
Penelope, spot on as usual. Part time work as a parent is really, really tough. I worked PT until my youngest was in middle school. It was great for my employer, as they got a well educated person who wanted to add new skills to keep growing (for my future return to FT, which joy of joys, coincided with the recession), and so what really happened is I frenziedly squished 40 hours of work into 20 hours so I could get my kids off the school bus and then made dinner, clean the house, parent, wife, launder, carpool, etc etc you know the drill. And had to deal with a very expensive school system that really didn’t serve my kids to the best of their abilities.
What my husband and I really wanted was to each work part time, like 3 or 4 days each. But we couldn’t, because benefits incl. health insurance is based on who your work for. And even with the new legislation, that isn’t likely to change. Not to mention I was unable to a) save much if at all for my own retirement and b)get credit for my mothering job with social security.
The real question for the President and other leaders suggesting universal pre-k, and (in many places already existing) FT kindergarten is this: WHY in the world do you want me to entrust my child to you?
I’m thankful that most of the time during those years of expanding credit, our family didn’t outspend our earnings. And that my kids choice of college was based on their understanding of how much (if any) debt they wanted to incur.
Thank you for a great post! I was given a lot of trouble because I wouldn’t send my daughter. I’m staying home with a younger child as well and I was told I was cheating her out of the “experience” of Pre-K..and hey..”it’s free” they said. I love your blog and wish you all wonderfulness:)
I agree wholeheartedly. I think institutionalizing toddlers is unthinkable,but we’ve convinced ourselves that small kids need consistency and somehow that equates to a rigid schedule of coloring from 8 to 9, and recess from 9 to 10, etc. All this with a stranger in a daycare, who is more babysitter than educator, especially at 15:1 ratios. Attention and caring seem infinitely more important than some curriculum. Nothing bothers me more than to pick up my kids from daycare and see one of them playing by themselves, or nose covered with snot, or even dirty pants, since thin ratios don’t allow a teacher to help wipe (either end)!
Just a note, in regards to deadbeat dads, what about deadbeat moms? There are a whole lot less deadbeat dads because of powers given to the family law system over the last 20-30 years. As a divorced father of 2 little ones, it’s all too easy for a divorce nowdays. Child support laws allow for a woman to walk away from the stress of child rearing with a pretty good “golden parachute”, at least in the case of educated parents. Custody for a woman is all but guaranteed, child support is simply a formula with no means test or requirement that the money be spent on the children. Then 2 single parent households requires daycare to support the mess left behind, of 2 households for 1 family.
Maybe it’s not feminism, so much as a culture built around “me” above all else. Few people really see family as a priority, but as children yet another status symbol to wear designer clothes and be in 6 extra-curriculars. Then we get back to pushing a work schedule on the kids rather than creativity and learning about the world. Just a thought…
As at least some of the links go back to the UK, here are the UK arrangements. These address many of the concerns raised above. In particular, the amount of time is limited to half a school week, the ratio of staff to children is MUCH higher than in the US state system, the children learn through self directed play and there is a well thought out set of outcomes.
Each child between the ages of 2 and 5 is entitled to 15 hours a week of state funded preschool. This is not mandatory, and the take-up is actually quite low.
Preschools are inspected every three years like every other school and unsatisfactory settings are given extra support and a limited time to get themselves in order. The ratings are published.
Preschools are funded for one staff member per 8 children. There is a requirement of 1::4 for children under the age of three. Most preschools that I have seen have aimed for an overall ration of about 1::5.The level of funding is determined by the qualifications of the staff. Qualifications range from a basic National Vocational Qualification 2 in Preschool (equivalent to the basic target qualification for all school leavers) through to degree level.
Each child will have a keyworker who monitors and records their progress and encourages them through the early years curriculum. Activities and topics should come from the children themselves rather than a preset plan.
Sessions are typically for three hours with 10 to 25 children in a session.
Many settings are run by committees of parents employing professional staff. Others are privately owned, usually by the manager. It is common practice for a rota of parents to help out with the sessions.
Standards differ widely. There is a problem with the abilities of staff in some settings.
All in all, this is an addition to the learning and play that a child does at home, not a replacement. I do hope that you get something that works as well in the US, and that you make better use of it than we do.
I was lucky enough to be at home with my son for 5 years…until he started Kindergarten. His father and i divorced soon afterwards and I have not worked more than 30 hours a week so that I could be available when he was home. My work was not always glamorous but I chose to be present in my work and made several small paying jobs turn into a good income because I performed well and enjoyed what i could. Still, we lived a rather minimalist life as far as consuming goes…no cable or video game systems or fancy phones and often no car. This was only possible because his father is a good man who took responsibility for the child he loved and was there emotionally and financially. I am one of the lucky ones. My son is a very well adjusted 18 yr old with a generous nature and a sweet soul. Ironically, I am now a preschool teacher and I get to love those children (whose parents either need or want to work) and care for them. I do not think children should be forced into preschool. However, I do not think that disadvantaged children should be left home to fend for themselves or with an older, maybe less attentive sibling, either. It is such a complex issue. I do not think complex issues ever have a “one size fits all” answer, as your post shows. Thank you for your honest, provocative message that started such a needed dialogue!
I barely had the stomach to finish reading this blog. It really felt like someone was trying to give me the buisness, and I think this is all an attempt to bring people over to your party of choice. Its about the politics, not the kids. Same as always. Why don’t you do some research on childhood development and educational systems that are beating us at just about everything, before you run your mouth off and confuse everybody again? Let me say this too; you don’t speak for me. I’m a woman and a mom, and my son goes to one of the best preschools in town. We couldn’t afford it, my family had to pay for it. That school has blessed our lives and blessed our son completely, and I will sell blood if I have to, so he can go back next year. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
I do beleive that there are also serious issues in the middle and upper years of education attainment that require more than national will and tons of funding.