Hooray for state-funded all-day kindergarten in Indiana?
My Man Mitch just announced that due to a forecasted increase in state revenues over the next two years, full-day kindergarten will now be provided by public schools. That’s personally awesome for me, because Mr. Mock and I were preparing to budget for the $1900 it would have cost starting this fall to send Mini-Mock to full day kindergarten. But more importantly, it’s fulfilling one of Mitch’s campaign promises. And in addition to that, money is also being set aside for performance-based rewards for the best teachers.Daniels deserves high praise for Indiana's solvency. And I understand why he campaigned on making all-day public kindergarten more available; it's a popular move among parents who would otherwise have to pay for daycare or private kindergarten to fill out the hours between 9:00 and 3:00. Free money!
But I don't know why conservatives are cheering. That $1900 isn't a tax cut which allows the family to keep more of its own earnings; it's tax dollars spent to extend the state's reach into our kids' lives. Lest we forget, public schools aren't politically neutral environments. Sure, lots of parents want what Daniels is providing. That's part of the problem. They have the obvious financial interest gleefully admitted to by the blogger above, and they reflexively swallow the more-school-is-better theory, or at least pay it lip service. One Indiana parent:
Giving them that opportunity to get used to being in an all-day classroom structure is a huge advantage in preparing them for first grade and beyond.And why not full-time "school" for four year-olds (or three, or two?), to prepare them for the long slog of kindergarten and the drudgery "beyond"? I don't buy the argument that a longer day at an earlier age gives kids more "advantages" than would a few more hours spent at home drawing pictures, reading stories, playing with brothers and sisters, and generally living life in a family instead of in an institution.
President Obama and Arne Duncan would like to make state-run preschool universal, extend the school day even further, and put an end to the summer vacation. An alarming number of children are already consuming three meals a day at school. It's a pernicious anti-family trend that conservatives should resist.
Secretary Duncan:
“Where students have longer days, longer weeks, longer years — that’s making a difference.”Longer days and years make better drones and weaker families. Yeah, I'm biased. See also:
Government school is bad for kids
Why public schools can't get better
Public indoctri-cation (linked above)
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A friend from Brazil said that when she was young, school, started early in the morning and lasted until lunch, when kids would go home to their families and spend the rest of the day there. That would assume, however, that there were families at home to go to and spend time with before 5pm.
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