The discussion of my post on how California's high tax rates and regulatory mania are chasing the best and brightest out of the state has evolved into a fascinatingly fatuous debate over whether it makes sense for the government to pay for preschool for all children. Matt Huisman's astute criticism of the "logic" (and it really does need quotation marks in this case) behind this proposal reminds me of a phrase I've written before and think worth reviving here:
The American K-12 education system is so bad that every effort to fix it only manages to make it worse.
As Matt's comment makes clear, the movement for universal, state-provided pre-K is another evidence of the truth of this principle.
9 comments:
You or one of your proxies should really justify the use of the word "fatuous." Speaking as someone keenly involved in early childhood education, calling something fatuous doesn't make it so, especially universal preschool.
What, precisely, is "devoid of intelligence" here?
Allow me to insert a caveat:
If you're referring to the proposed ballot initiative in particular, then indeed, it is rather fatuous. If you are referring to the scholastic trend in early childhood education, then there is likewise a case to be made. If you are referring to the utility of preschool education in general, then there's a problem.
Don't sweat it James. The only thing worse then being fascinatingly fatuous is not being fascinatingly fatuous at all.
Or something like that.
on't sweat it James. The only thing worse then being fascinatingly fatuous is not being fascinatingly fatuous at all.
No, I think the only worse thing is people who don't know anything about pre-K education deciding that all contrary information is fatuous.
Or something like that.
It was the debate that was called fatuous ... sheesh!
Yeah, I was rather picking a fight with that. I gotta knock that stuff off.
Why is it that they are not getting Kindergarten? If it’s so important, why not just start there rather than spend billions of dollars creating a whole new grade level?
No matter where you start in the logic you've put forward, it all leads back to the same conclusion:
Educators can't cover all the material they'd like to in 13 years (K-12) anymore.
There can be only two reasons for this:
1) Educators have lost their way
2) Kids are different
I could make great arguments for both, but I believe the answer is probably #2. The disparity in family structures and levels of parental engagement are so great now that no amount of improvement in #1 will be able to overcome it. At bottom, educators are merely hired hands - they can only be part of the solution to someone else's problem.
Pre-school is, at best, a way to push the signs of an achievement gap back a year or two.
Because Kindergatren has begun teaching 1st grade instead of normal Kindergarten.
But why did they do that in the first place? Kindergarten is the most important thing ever, and the people that care about kids more than life itself just dropped it?
But I'm looking at the contingencies so that we don't have at least one year of kids ill prepred for grade school.
You think it would be easier to add a whole new grade level? By September? I suggested a curriculum addition/modification...you want to build classrooms, hire addt'l teachers and change the curriculum.
Well there is also the fact that the field of human knowledge has expanded geometrically.
A very fine point. If there really is more we wan't to teach, I don't have a problem with it taking longer. But why does it always sound like the rest of the world is (far) ahead of us all the time?
Sure but we NEED that year or two of leeway since any fix is going to take a while to implement, no?
So we're going to build classrooms, hire teachers and design temporary curriculums in order to take it away in a couple of years once we've figured it all out?
Pre-school just doesn't cut it as a realistic solution to anything. If it was a component of some broader reform it might be more believable, but right now it looks more like a patch (I'm being charitable here).
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