A Study in Critical Thinking (Looking at Compulsory Education and the Push for an Earlier Start)

A Study in Critical Thinking (Looking at Compulsory Education and the Push for an Earlier Start)

by Wayne Walker

Wayne Walker is the publisher and editor of the Online Newsletter, HEADSUP (HOMESCHOOL EDUCATORS ON ACTIVE DUTY, SENDING UPWARD PRAISES). He writes the following article as a father and citizen concerned about the push for mandated pre-school programs in his state of Missouri and which seems to be prevalent across the U.S. It was written in response to an article that appeared in his local newspaper on the subject.


When compulsory school attendance laws were originally passed beginning in the mid to late 1800's and into the early 1900's, many states did not start compulsory attendance until age seven because it was commonly accepted that a lot of children were not developmentally able to handle the stress of school at ages five and six. However, as more and more socialist-thinking people, who viewed their role as changing society to fit their ideas, came to be in control of the educational establishment, an effort was made to get children away from their parents' control and into government-approved indoctrination centers at earlier and earlier ages. First, many states lowered the compulsory attendance age to six. Next came the push for mandatory kindergarten. Now, there is a move to demand mandatory pre-kindergarten classes for allchildren.

In the May 17, 2006, issue of the South County Journal, a free, local weekly newspaper in our area, there was a letter by Catherine Martarella headlines "PK-3: Maximizing children's potential." It appeared to be one of those generically prepared letters on an issue that are mass mailed to all media outlets to see how many will publish them. Catherine Martarella is the program director for Citizens for Missouri's Children, an organization founded in 1983 as a state-wide advocate for child protection, early care and education, health and mental health care and youth development. It is always good to know a little bit about the background and views of an organization to help one understand why they say and do certain things.

A check of the website of Citizens for Missouri's Children shows that their mission is "To advocate the rights and well-being of all Missouri's children, especially those with the greatest need." Their vision states, "We believe that all children in the state should benefit from public policies that guarantee they are protected and secure in nurturing environments, allowing them to thrive and grow to their greatest potential." This is so noble-sounding! Of course, everyone supports the well-being of all children. Yes, we agree that public policies should promote and support caring families in which children are protected and secure in nurturing environments, allowing them to thrive and grow to their greatest potential. However, notice what is missing in the quotes. There is no mention of "family" or "parents" anywhere! I have an idea this organization's view, when translated into simple language, is that government is better at protecting, securing, and nurturing children than their own families are.

Let us now look at the article itself. It begins, "As Missouri considers increasing its investment in prekindergarten, we must consider this public investment in early learning. Maximizing these public dollars requires aligning standards, curriculum and assessment from pre-kindergarten through kindergarten, and into the early elementary grades. That's the PK-3 approach. PK-3 begins with voluntary full-school-day pre-kindergarten for all 3- and 4-year-old children. Compulsory schooling begins in kindergarten with a curriculum that builds on pre-kindergarten experiences. Children learn social skills and self-discipline as well as reading and math."

When people who think that the government does a better job at anything that promotes increased government spending on their pet projects, why is it that they always call it a "public investment"? The answer is that they want someone else to pay for their plans. Obviously, someone is going to have to do all this "aligning standards, curriculum and assessment" and then monitor it. And who better to do that than the same leftists and government bureaucrats who are promoting it in the first place? What a wonderful way to guarantee their job security! And to control the minds of impressionable children in the process! See what I mean about getting children away from their parents at increasingly early ages? Voluntary full-school-day prekindergarten for all 3- and 4-year-old children? Why should anyone in his right mind think that three and four year old kids should be cooped up in a school room for six or eight hours every day, five days a week for half a year? Also, what starts out as "voluntary" (though usually under great pressure) eventually becomes "mandatory." Kindergarten used to be thought of as "voluntary" but now it is "mandatory" under this thinking. Finally, why cannot children learn social skills and self-discipline from parents and family? Or are parents nowadays just too stupid to teach their children these things?

However, there are supposed to be all kinds of benefits for this "public investment." According to the article, "Research supports the PK-3 approach. A study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association tracked 1,500 disadvantaged minority children in Chicago for 16 years....Called the Child-Parent Centers, these programs were part of the Chicago Public School system. The study found that CPC participants were almost 30 percent more likely to complete high school than a comparison group of equally disadvantaged children." Someone has said that figures do not lie, but liars sure do figure.

What struck me about this research is that it only deals with disadvantaged children. Most of us would probably agree that in situations where children are growing up in a home where both mom and dad are away working all day or otherwise absent and there is hardly any parental supervision or nurturing it might be better for those children to be in an early learning center. However, to take these exceptional situations, apply the conclusions drawn from them across the board to all families, even those where the parents are present and nurturing, and then seek for laws to require every three and four year old to start PK-3 programs in public (or state-approved private) schools is the height of absurdity! These people really must think that all parents are just too stupid to raise their children, so the government, through PK-3 programs, will have to do it for them.

In another attempt at proving the benefits of PK-3 programs, the article says, "According to the recently released Child Well-Being Index (CWI) report, the rise in 9-year-old's math and reading performance as measured by the National Assessment of Education Progress ('the nation's report card') corresponds with the dramatic expansion of pre-kindergarten since the mid '90s." Notice carefully what is NOT said. It is not said, because there is evidently no evidence whatever to prove it, that the rise in 9-year-old's math and reading performance WAS CAUSED BY the dramatic expansion of pre-kindergarten. Ms. Martarella would undoubtedly have given her eyeteeth if she could have said that. But she did not because she could not, although she obviously seeks to imply it. All she could say was that the rise "corresponds with" the expansion. The truth is that there could be any number of other factors which may have contributed to the rise.

The stated reason (again, I believe that the real, unstated goal is to get children away from their parents and under state control as early as possible) for this mandatory early learning push is to give children a "Head Start" (the name of another similarly-aimed government anti-poverty program of questionable value) so that "children reach fourth grade equipped with the skills needed to learn at a higher level." Forty years ago, when I was in elementary school, what we accomplished in first, second, and third grades seemed to do quite nicely, thank you! But do such early learning programs really increase readiness? The research examined by Dr. Raymond and the late Dorothy Moore show otherwise. Dr. Moore was an official in the Reagan Education Department and shows in Better Late Than Early and School Can Wait, which led to their other books promoting homeschooling, Home Grown Kids and Home Spun Schools, that children who grew up with stimulating environments in nurturing homes until they were eight or nine did just as well in school when placed with other children their age without the danger of academic burnout.

This past year, there was a movement in California for universal preschool. Diane Flynn Keith in an article "Universal Preschool: What?s Behind the Claims That It Will Stop Crime, Secure Your Child?s Future, Save Social Security and Provide A Free Government Nanny!" (The Link; Volume 8, Issue 2; pp. 13, 22, 37, 49, 51) states, "In fact, there are a number of revered child development experts who strongly oppose the institutionalization of mainstream young children in academic programs and warn of the potential damage intellectually, psychologically, emotionally, socially and physically to them if separated from their parents and homes." She cites Mary Eberstadt?s Home Alone America: The Hidden Toll of Day Care, Behavioral Drugs and Other Parent Substitutes and David Elkind's Miseducation: Preschoolers At Risk. She also quotes renowned educational psychologist and authority on brain development in children, Jane Healy, Ph.D., who in Your Child?s Growing Mind: Brain Development and Learning From Birth to Adolescence, says to parents, "Give your child the gift of patience for the broad-based mental experiences that will underlie joyous learning throughout life?Childhood is a process, not a product, and so is learning. In a society that often respects products more than the processes of creation and thought, it is easy to fall into the trap of anxiety over measuring achievement in isolated skills. Have faith in childhood and yourself. Children?s brains generally seek what they need, and nature has given you the instincts to help them get it."

Keith concludes, "For 80% of the preschool population, learning at home with loving parents -- who may also occasionally and thoughtfully use private and co-op preschool programs in their community that emphasize imaginative play and facilitate a child?s natural curiosity -- is a better model for the healthy intellectual, physical, social and emotional development of young children than any government preschool program could ever be. More than ever, parents need to be informed in order to maintain their right to determine the educational path of their own children without government mandates or interference....We should all care enough to examine the research and claims made in support of government funded and/or mandated universal preschool before we allow it to take hold."

Sharna Olfman, Ph. D., who is a clinical psychologist, an associate professor of Psychology in the Department of Humanities and Human Sciences at Point Park College in Pittsburgh, PA, and editor of the book All Work and No Play: How Educational Reforms are Harming our Preschoolers, issues similar warning in an article "The Push for Early Childhood Literacy: A Risk Factor in Child Psychopathology" (Home Educator's Family Times; March/April, 2006; pp. 8, 25). She concludes, "It is a striking paradox that as adults feel increasingly entitled to place their individual needs first, we are creating educational environments that do not respect children's individuality or their special status as children. We introduce concepts long before children are ready to master them, deny their need for play, subject them to uniform curricula and assessment, and label and drug the children who do not fit in. Our preoccupation with understanding the genetic and neurological bases of illness, while ignoring the power of the environment, also speaks to our increasingly mechanized conceptualization of human nature."

So, beware of attempts to mandate universal preschool. Home educating families will be affected if such programs are adopted. In states like Missouri where records have to be kept by homeschooling parents for students falling under the compulsory attendance ages, record keeping will become even more onerous as records will have to be kept for three, four, five, and six year olds as well as those who are actually of "school age." There is one more item in Catherine Martarella's article that I would like to point out. "To help qualified teachers make a career of early education, we must pay them what we pay all other elementary school teachers." Translation: Watch your pocketbook and look for a HUGE TAX INCREASE if these programs are adopted.

At This School, Students Decide What To Learn

At This School, Students Decide What To Learn Posted 2006-07-24
By Brad Jenkins



It sounds like the kind of school a child dreams about: Kids make the rules, and they decide what they want to learn and when.

It’s how Sarah Diener Beachy grew up, and it’s how she wants to teach other students.

Beachy, a 27-year-old who lives just outside Harrisonburg, is the founder of Shenandoah Valley Community School, which enters the scene as public-school alternatives continue to gain attention.

Beachy’s private school, which opens next month with three students, may be the most unorthodox of the local options.

The school, according to its written philosophy statement, is a "noncoercive educational community in which students are free to pursue their interests and direct their own learning."

Each morning, Beachy will meet with students and find out what they want to learn. Beachy, a former public school teacher, will teach or she’ll call on volunteers from the community to teach more specialized lessons.

"We believe everyone has an intrinsic desire to learn," said Beachy, who took a year off her studies at Eastern Mennonite University to visit other learner-centered schools.

Read Article: Click on Title Above.

Benefits of Homeschooling

Homeschool Benefits

As a home-school student I would like to answer some of Alison Farmer’s queries ("Public Schooling Is Best," July 21) about home education.

First, home-schoolers are not isolated. They cooperate in order to provide their children with many "academic possibilities." I have had the privilege of sitting under university accredited parents in multiple classes, including "adequate" science labs and "collaborative" Shakespeare discussions. No home-school parent would claim to be proficient in all subjects, but by each sharing talents and knowledge it becomes achievable.

Second, home schoolers do "lose out on the socialization of a public school environment," but it is not us who lose. My friends tell me stories of how frustrating it is to face the influences that surround them everyday, especially the pressure to become sexually active.

But, I am not "sheltered." I have been taught the consequences of choices, and how to respond in difficult situations. I am confident in my response. As far as being "class president" or "quarterback", few people have that opportunity in a large school. Most home-school families have chances for leadership and responsibility through sibilings.

In a "real world" situation, there are annoying things that other people do. In a home-school setting, you’re living with those people and learning how to deal with them appropriately, which is a "trial of growing up." Home schooling is not "tearing apart the basis of American education," but was the foundation of early American education, and largely influenced the one room school house until the 20th Century.

As a home-schooled junior, I am thankful for my home education, and feel fully prepared to face the future. But before you begin to ban homeschooling, I invite you to dinner so you can see how "sheltered, isolated, and unsocialized" my family is. Chances are, you might be surprised.

Lydia Smith
Harrisonburg