The latest study on preschools says this:
No matter how much we spend on schools, on early education programs, on day care, on a thousand heroic efforts to give children what they should get before age 6 but don’t, it all comes down to parents: Good parenting or bad parenting is the single biggest factor in how children turn out. That has been obvious common sense for all of time, so naturally the federal government is spending $200 million to "discover" it and make sure the rest of us pay attention. If it weren’t so infuriating, it would be funny.
The money is for a multiyear project as part of the federally financed Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, which is tracking more than 1,300 children in various arrangements, including staying home with a parent, being cared for by a nanny or a relative or attending a large day care center. An earlier report showed that children in day care were more likely to be disruptive in kindergarten. The report just released tracks those same children through the sixth grade. Later ones will track them through high school.
The current report says: Time spent in high-quality day care centers correlates with a higher vocabulary throughout elementary school. But keeping a preschooler in day care for at least a year increases the likelihood that a child will be disruptive in class, regardless of the quality of the day care center. As one commenter wryly noted: At least my kid might be able to talk himself out of whatever trouble he gets into.
Just the opposite of what Senator Dempster was saying in the 2007 South Dakota Legislature. Olivia St. John adds this study to those done on homeschooling:
While this longitudinal multi-million dollar study on the lives of institutionalized children has been slogging along for 16 years, other researchers have been studying another group of youngsters, namely, those being homeschooled. Oddly enough, all these studies lead to the same logical conclusion: Home is where true childhood socialization is built. If you want a child to act like an animal, then send him to the funny farm commonly known as the public school and day-care system. If you want him to be civilized, teach him at home.
St. John gives this detail:
Another social development study conducted by professor Larry Shyers from the University of Central Florida concluded that home-educated children exhibit significantly better behavior than their public school peers. The study suggests this positive behavior may result because homeschooled children tend to imitate their parents, while institutionalized children model themselves after their peers. What a novel idea!
The late Dr. Raymond Moore with the Hewitt Research Center quoted renowned psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner's assertion that the withdrawal of parents in the rearing of their children is "a major factor threatening the breakdown of the socialization process in America." Indeed, Bronfenbrenner coined the phrase "social contagion" to describe the negative peer pressures contracted like diseases inside institutionalized settings.
The facts are in, aren't they? Does the government need to continue spending our tax money to figure this out?
And Leo Mooris makes this point regarding taxes:
But how many who have to use day care now would do something else if public policy made it easier for them? All the government subsidies and incentives these days go to the large, institutional day care centers. Those who want to do something in-home, say, or use day care by a relative or a church, don’t get the same breaks. Taxing policy could be friendlier to families. An average family today pays more in federal, state and local taxes than for food, clothing, transportation and housing combined. If their tax burdens were lower, how many families could live on one income, and how many would choose to do so?
Don’t expect to see the results of these study in the Argus Leader. They don’t like crow. Here are some of those 'life skills' the Argus Leader was talking about this morning:
According to Chris Klicka, Senior Counsel with the Home School Legal Defense Association, "the only 'socialization' or aspect of the 'real world' which [children] miss out on by not attending the public school is unhealthy peer pressure, crime and immorality. Of course, the average homeschooler wisely learns about these things from afar instead of being personally involved in crime or immorality or perhaps from being a victim."
So if we want to improve public education’s quality, no doubt the socialization via the agenda of the far-left secular humanists needs to be removed, and going back to readin', writin' and 'rithmetic would also be not near as expensive.
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