Republicans Are Wrong About Early Childhood Ed

Parents have every right to send their children under 6 to daycare, pre-K, kindergarten, or preschool. And they have the right to keep them at home until the first grade if they desire. At least they have that right at present! Some people would like to make early institutionalization of children mandatory. Their idea is that if we just got children into a school setting early enough, that would solve many of our social ills. With that notion, we couldn’t disagree more!

Now enter the Republicans in the Louisiana House of Representatives. Last week, they went to the mat for a wrong-headed idea. They proposed cutting the state sales tax and devoting more than $50 million to “early childhood education” — pre-K, kindergarten, and pre-school. This reveals a massive misunderstanding of human development, education, and the source of peer dependency that leads to crime, drugs, promiscuity, and death.

Dr. Raymond Moore wrote two monumental books, School Can Wait and Better Late Than Early, which compiled all the research on early childhood education. What they showed was that taking children out of the home and putting them in institutions — daycare, pre-K, kindergarten or pre-school — was destructive of both their educational and social development, even in the case of Headstart. 

For example, in the case of reading, the child who is taught reading at age 4 or 5 will naturally test better at age 6 than a 6-year-old who is just learning to read. However, by age 8, they will be on the same level, no matter when they started. There is zero demonstrable long-term educational benefit to early institutionalization of young children.

Even some organizations that advocate for early schooling of children freely admit that forcing kids to read before they are ready is harmful. 

The Washington Post reported, “Two organizations that advocate for early childhood education — Defending the Early Years and Alliance for Childhood — issued the report titled ‘Reading in Kindergarten: Little to Gain and Much to Lose.’  It says there is no evidence to support a widespread belief in the United States that children must read in prekindergarten or kindergarten to become strong readers and achieve academic success.”

The researchers, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Geralyn Bywater McLaughlin, and Joan Wolfsheimer Almon,

found the following, as summarized by the Washington Post: 

•Many children are not developmentally ready to read in kindergarten, yet the Common Core State Standards require them to do just that. This is leading to inappropriate classroom practices.

•No research documents long-term gains from learning to read in kindergarten.

•Research shows greater gains from play-based programs than from preschools and kindergartens with a more academic focus.

•Children learn through playful, hands-on experiences with materials, the natural world, and engaging, caring adults.

•Active, play-based experiences in language-rich environments help children develop their ideas about symbols, oral language and the printed word — all vital components of reading.

•We are setting unrealistic reading goals and frequently using inappropriate methods to accomplish them.

•In play-based kindergartens and preschools, teachers intentionally design language and literacy experiences which help prepare children to become fluent readers.

•The adoption of the Common Core State Standards falsely implies that having children achieve these standards will overcome the impact of poverty on development and learning, and will create equal educational opportunity for all children.

The Post said, “The report says that kindergarten has since the 1980s become increasingly academic — with big pushes from President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind and President Obama’s Race to the Top — and that today many children are being asked to do things they are not ready to do.”

Other research shows a sinister side of early institutionalization of children. By age 12, 13, and 14, when children begin having serious problems with alcohol, drugs, crime, and promiscuity, the rate is extremely high for children who were institutionalized at tender ages. That is where they learned that the people who matter are their peers, not their parents. However, according to research, children who start school late — at 7 or 8 — almost never have those problems. By then, they have absorbed the values of their parents. The reality is that early institutionalization of children leads to peer dependency.

To view a short video on what researchers found about trying to make young children to read, click the QR Code below.