Robert Fulghum's bestseller All I Really Need to Know I Learned in
Kindergarten recounts the life lessons we carry from our early years. So
it is with learning the ABCs: All Children Really Need to Know They Can
Learn in Kindergarten. No preschool required.
Nevertheless, kids are skipping off to class earlier and earlier. If the
average mother in past generations felt pressure to be home with her
children, the average mother today feels pressure to send her toddlers to
preschool.
Self-proclaimed child advocates are sounding the alarms. "We can't wait
until kindergarten to prepare them," says the head of an initiative that
would spend $150 million annually for more preschool services in Arizona.
When is it time to wave goodbye to mom and dad and hello to teacher?
Our grandparents didn't attend preschools, and neither did our parents.
Chances are that most of us reading this article didn't either. If we
attended kindergarten, it was probably for just a few hours a day.
Generations of Americans went to college, raised their families and kept
America growing, all without preschool.
If preschool is a requirement for success, how did so many of us succeed
without it? And why are so many students today failing with it? Preschool
rates have soared from 15 percent in the 1960s to 65 percent today. Yet
the Nation's Report Card shows no change in test scores after all this
time. Children are spending an extra year (sometimes two) in school with
nothing to show for it.
With a record like this, how did preschool go from being an optional "a la
carte" to a mandatory "must-have"?
One reason is the misuse of research on children in stark circumstances.
When one 1960s experiment showed that intense early intervention could
give struggling children a leg up, the benefits of intervention were
assumed for all children. That was a mistake.
Penicillin can help a sick patient, but it provides no benefit to a
healthy body and may even be harmful. Likewise, most American children are
not severely deprived, and for them, leaving a healthy home environment
may be a costly tradeoff.
It is widely understood that early education can increase knowledge at
school entry. There's no surprise there. But here's the rest of the story:
"For most children, the cognitive benefits of prekindergarten quickly
fade," the National Bureau of Economic Research says.
That is to say, children with and without preschool perform the same on
tests over time.
Unfortunately, there's more. Preschool incubates negative social
behaviors. The bureau finds that "Prekindergarten attendance increases
aggression and decreases self-control." But unlike the cognitive gains
which fade, "the behavioral effects persist."
The most recent analysis of 14,000 children by researchers at Stanford and
Berkeley reached a similar conclusion: "Attending a center also appears to
suppress social development, including the child's motivated engagement in
kindergarten classrooms, self-regulation, and a variety of interpersonal
skills . . . relative to parental care."
It's time for candor. Preschool is neither necessary nor sufficient for
cognitive development, behavioral development or school achievement. It
won't get a child into Harvard, and it won't keep him out of jail.
In the meantime, a political game of pass-the-buck continues, with elected
officials eager to point a finger at preschoolers and parents, anyone but
themselves and the declining K-12 system for which they are responsible.
International comparisons show U.S. students earn A's in the early years
but become D students by high school. Preschool won't fix that.
A recent Arizona Republic editorial acknowledged evidence that preschool
benefits wear off, and then said, "But that's not the question. The
question is, what is best for the children now?"
What is best for children now is what has always been best for children:
good parents. Preparing a child for school requires what it always has,
and it's neither fancy nor costly. It's what millions of parents still do
every day: talk, read or sing to, play with and love their children.
Sometimes what is popular is not always right, and what is right is not
always popular. Universal preschool is the case in point.
