<p>It makes me laugh that government regulated preschool is Hillary’s answer for poor/minority kids: they’ve done such a great job with k-12, after all. :rolleyes: Not to mention the paltry amount of research behind her massive government intervention proposal. I think Carl Bernstein is right about her quasi-messianic vision problem. :eek:</p>
<p>Vouchers are the answer and the main reason I became a Republican. I heard Hillary speak at length about them (nope, no way–you just don’t know what kind of people may be running these schools, said she).</p>
<p>It’s interesting that evangelicals support school choice and vouchers when it means when it means offering upper and middle class families money to spend on evangelicals’ schools instead of the government product. But if it means offering families the opportunity to attend a government school instead of spending money on the evangelicals’ product or having no access at all, they’re against it. They’d rather kids just not go to pre-school if they can’t afford evangelical day care.</p>
<p>Hmm. For parental choice and vouchers on the one hand, and against it on the other. But at least they’re consistent on one thing: maximizing the revenue for their businesses.</p>
<p>NEWSFLASH: hereshoping, nothing is stopping evangelicals from offering free pre-K to children who can’t afford it. At least nothing but the evangelicals’ own interest level. </p>
<p>However, I do not believe that as a group evangelicals would rather children who can’t afford church-run pre-K not go. I think that only a small number–the Christianists, as opposed to Christians–support limiting children’s opportunities in that way.</p>
<p>I-dad, Well hopefully they think before they get into conception-mode, shall we say. I think couples have a responsibility to plan, in some degree, for dual “coverage.” Not all the couples I know who do this are nearly upper-income, either. (Those with the luxury to have one parent take a prolonged hiatus from a career while the family lives on one salary.) I know plenty of low-middle income families who work out a flex schedule so that there is a great deal of parental overlap, while nevertheless having to resort to part-time institutional or private child care.</p>
<p>Most couples Thinking Parental Thoughts would do well to think a few years ahead, toward how at least one of them could transition to a more telecommuting or odd-shift or part-time position, while not completely sacrificing that income. Not everyone can do this. But I also don’t buy that it’s the government’s responsibility to institutionalize infants. I favor more of a matching stipend arrangement for those who meet the income threshold for that: perhaps if the couple has saved <em>something</em> to prepare for this blessed event, the gov’t can contribute an equal amount to allow the parent to stay home without anxiety until at least preschool years.</p>
<p>Honestly, conyat (post #353). What part of this don’t you understand?</p>
<p>You posted a link to a blog. That is against the Terms of Service for this forum. Plain, literal, simple, straightforward. No spin on “the spirit of the rule” or gratuitous insults on your part are necessary. Accusing hereshoping of censorship was insulting. And, by extension, accusing hereshoping of power-mongering and being intolerant of criticism was insulting.</p>
<p>MM, if the Mods decide that my link to a blog about an unrelated political topic is a threat to college topics being discussed here rather than elsewhere, no doubt they’ll remove it. But the information in that blog post does not compete in any way with CC’s college discussion forums. </p>
<p>It’s pretty clear that the rule is meant to stop people from posting links to “MaryAnn’s college discussion blog, everyone come talk there and not here” or “Joe’s ideas about how to get into an Ivy, let’s all do what he says, even though he’s got no experience with it.”</p>
<p>I don’t believe the rule is meant to surpress access to political analysis that hereshoping would rather people not read just because the url has the magic letters: b-l-o-g in it. </p>
<p>If you’ve ever been part of running an on-line community, you’d know that mods are meant to use their discretion. That’s the entire purpose of having moderators.</p>
<p>Quite frankly, I don’t see any reason for making this thread all about the posters and not about the topic. But to each his own I guess.</p>
<p>In 2002, 31% of the children in the United States under the age of 18 lived in a household without two parents.</p>
<p>The widespread, affordable availabilty of pre-school programs is an important national need. One political party is more attuned to this real need for real people than the other.</p>
<p>It’s also kind of a misnomer to suggest that government regulation of preschool is something novel. I don’t know of any state that doesn’t have licensing regulations for day care providers who serve more than a mininum # of children (usually about 6). </p>
<p>Licensing regulations are in everyone’s best interest who cares about children. They ensure that fire and safety regulations are followed, that there’s adequate staff and facilities to ensure health and safety, that background checks are done on staff, etc. </p>
<p>It’s true that some states, such as Alabama, have exempted church-run preschools from having to comply with the fire code and other measures meant to ensure children’s safety. But it’s simply not true that government regulation of preschool is in any way novel or not in children’s best interests. </p>
<p>And I’ve seen nothing in Hillary’s plan that suggests if implemented, church run pre-schools would have to begin receiving inspection visits from the Fire Marshall and the Health Department like other preschools. Parents will still be able to choose to take the risk of sending their child to an unlicensed religious pre-school if they want to.</p>
<p>If you aren’t happy with your schools, you should take it up with friends and neighbors on the local school board. I would rate the schools my daughter attended as excellent – especially the elementary school.</p>
<p>So, I would say that they did a fine job in my town.</p>
<p>MIT doesn’t think public schools do such a bad job. The overwhelming majority (71%) of their admitted students come from public schools.</p>
<p>Only a handful (8%) come from religious schools. That’s even fewer than the % that come from foreign schools. And I’d bet that of the 8%, most are from Catholic schools with good reputations, and not the Protestant evangelicals’ schools.</p>
<p>At Harvard, 2/3 of the students are from public schools.</p>
<p>Questioning conservatives’ conviction that abortion is murder by comparing their levels of attachment to a fetus vs a child is pretty disingenuous. Do pet owners think that kids in Africa with fatal diahrrea aren’t real people because they spend money on dog food that could be saving those kids’ lives? Its natural to feel more strongly for a child than for a fetus, but that doesn’t make the fetus any less alive, or its termination any less immoral. If it were a choice between saving a frozen embryo that my wife and I conceived vs saving a 4 year old I didn’t know, I’d save the embryo.</p>
<p>And I dont like abortions in the case of rape or incest at all, but I have to approach the question like this: if I had a daughter, and she got raped, and felt that she couldn’t bare to constantly be reminded of the worst moment of her life, I would want her to have a way out.</p>
<p>Vyse, we’re not talking about abortion on this thread, as a courtesy to ID, who would like a political discussion not dominated by the topic. Feel free to start another thread, and I’ll be happy to contribute some of the arguments made in the URL that shall not be named. You’ve said some fascinating things that I think bear further discussion.</p>
<p>It would be interesting to see what percentage of Harvard students participated in organized pre-school activities. I would bet that the answer is “substantially all of them” or very close.</p>
<p>Aren’t there even pre-school counseling services now to help upper class parents improve their children’s chances of admission at the elite pre-schools?</p>
<p>I don’t think it’d be that interesting. It seems that even if a strong correlation were found, anyone who used that to claim causation would have it in reverse. Intelligent parents and infants get an early start, but getting an early start won’t make you more intelligent. I can’t imagine what you could learn at age 4 that would be the difference between getting into Harvard.</p>
<p>In Freakonomics, Levitt cited studies showing that infants who had books in their house tested better than their peers later in life (all other factors controlled with regression analysis), while kids who actually read at that age didn’t test any better than those who didn’t. His conclusion then was that more books meant better educated parents, which meant better genes, while reading the cat in the hat was of marginal importance.</p>
<p>Well, the position of the pre-school counseling services is that if your child doesn’t get into the right pre-school, he or she won’t get into the right elementary school, leading to not getting into the right middle and secondary schools, leading to not getting into an elite college.</p>
<p>Apparently intelligent, genetically superior, well-educated parents believe it or they wouldn’t be shelling out the dough for it.</p>
<hr>
<p>On a more serious note, early intervention makes a huge, lifelong difference for children who are lagging developmentally.</p>
<p>The issue here isn’t really getting into Harvard (I just threw that out there as interesting). The issue for society, and the reason it may be a national interest, is to figure out a way to increase high school graduation rates and reduce incarceration rates, especially among low income male students. Whatever we are doing as a society is not really working that well and it costs an estimated $30,000 per inmate per year for jails (almost as much as a year at Harvard).</p>
<p>I would be interested in hearing the Republican candidates discuss some of their creative ideas. Maybe they’ll get a chance at the YouTube Debate. I believe they all ducked the Urban League candidate forum this week where these issues were front and center.</p>
<p>What I’m about to say is unpopular, but so be it.</p>
<p>The work politicians do to reduce incarceration rates is going to have to be met halfway by the cultures that are overrepresented in the prisons: indigent black and white males. No candidate on either side can convince the people getting locked up that being intelligent means you talk like whitey and are a punk, or that fighting someone gives you more “street cred”, or that hitting your girlfriend because she’s a ***** is ok if you promise not to do it again. I’m not Bill Cosby, so I expect to get crucified for saying so, but it still needs to be said.</p>