Baby College—as conceived by Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children Zone—has a real chance of making a significant dent on generational poverty in our time. What we’re learning about education says that the first five years of a child’s life are crucial to a kid’s success, and Baby College makes sure the parents are up to the task of giving poor kids the good stuff middle class kids have been getting for generations.
It’s an amazing project and for fraction of the price of some tax cuts we could be giving poor kids a real shot and creating good jobs for educators across America. If it were done right, the program could be subsidized considerably by more affluent parents who could afford and would be willing to pay for the program.
Give me one good reason—besides debt and tax cut mania—that universal Baby College should not be part of the 2009 stimulus.
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Comments ( 5 )
chris | Jan 05 2009 at 6:17 pm |Ill give you one reason. Parenting. It’s not the responsibility of the government, its the responsibility of the parents. Their is nothing keeping these parents from educating their children at a young age.
Just because something is noble, doesnt mean everyone else should have to pay for it.
chris | Jan 05 2009 at 6:18 pm |there arnt even enough quality educators in the current public schools, where are you going to find all these new ones?
Ryan | Jan 05 2009 at 6:38 pm |I don’t want some super-educated genius baby stealing my job!
mike | Jan 05 2009 at 11:20 pm |Universal preschool looks like a good idea on paper, but as has been noted in prior comments, there are several problems that prevent the idea from being one that will work well. A lack of teachers, funding, politics and constitutionality. *there are not enough teachers as it is, less if this is adopted… *there isn’t enough money, this is a recession where cuts are being made and unfortunately education is one of them… *who thinks putting the feds in control of local policy and funding for all of this is a good idea? *it isn’t constitutional per the tenth amendment [the most abused of all] but seriously, this is something individual states or your locality should take care of, not the feds… after all if the feds screw this up nationally there’s nothing you can do but move to canada or elsewhere outside the states- easier for the more affluent but very difficult for the poor. At least if a state botches the job they’d have an easier time getting out and away from that kind of system… Seriously don’t put this in the hands of the same idiots that are siphoning 300 billion a year out of the social security trust funds to fund tax cuts… think of the children
chris | Jan 06 2009 at 12:16 pm |you should have asked for like 50 good reasons not to do baby college….