Preschool or Not Preschool – It’s a Complicated Question
Friday, August 22nd, 2008
Summer’s over, for the most part, and I haven’t been taking time to write anything, though I’ve been reading a lot. Mostly its been taking the kids to t-ball and softball, taking them to the pool, taking them boating or sailing, taking them to Disneyland, or taking them to play practice. We’ve had far more fun than any family deserves and we’re not feeling guilty. Just tired, happy tired.
Speaking of guilt, there’s an opinion article in today’s WSJ (8/22/2008) titled “Protect Our Kids from Preschool” , by Shikha Dalmia and Lisa Snell. They argue that preschool isn’t good for our kids. Not a new argument, but with an interesting big gun to support their assertion. They quote James Heckman, Nobel Prize winner and one of the better and more prolific economic statisticians around, saying,
“Advocates and supporters of universal preschool often use existing research for purely political purposes … But the solid evidence for the effectiveness of early interventions is limited to those conducted on disadvantaged populations.”
The authors then go on cite several studies and lots of evidence that preschool isn’t doing us any good. But I think that their analysis is incomplete. It’s not always the best we get, but the best we can afford. (more…)
