Fwd: [arn2-strategy] Tracing the Roots of "Kindergarten Readiness"

[Susan Harman <susanharman@igc.org>]

Begin forwarded message:

  From: Peter Campbell <campbellp@mail.montclair.edu>

  Date: Fri Mar 21, 2008 1:29:36 PM US/Pacific

  To: ARN State <ARN-state@yahoogroups.com>, ARN Main List
  <arn-l@interversity.org>, arn2-strategy <arn2-strategy@yahoogroups.com>, ndsg
  Study Group <ndsgroup@yahoogroups.com>

  Subject: [arn2-strategy] Tracing the Roots of "Kindergarten Readiness"

  Reply-To: arn2-strategy@yahoogroups.com

  I posted some observations about this on my blog:

  http://transformeducation.blogspot.com/2008/03/tracing-roots-of-kindergarten-readiness.html

  Some key points:

  1) Head Start - Ironically, Head Start introduced the notion that
  child-rearing was a race. Through Head Start, very young children could be
  given a leg up -- literally a "head start" -- in the race to whatever the
  intended prize was. So if low-income kids could be given a head start, why
  shouldn't all kids be given a head start? The logic seemed (and still seems)
  unimpeachable. Not giving children every advantage has become unimaginable,
  and being a "good parent" is measured in terms of how many enrichments
  activities each child is engaged in. Of course, what this "head start for
  every child" approach overlooks is the fact that kids who already had a head
  start are given an even bigger lead. So instead of narrowing, the achievement
  gap widens.

  2) Markets and Marketing - As dual-income families became the norm in this
  country's professional class, there arose an unprecedented problem: who was
  going to raise their children? The extended family had all but vanished,
  replaced by the much more "efficient" nuclear family. There were no in-laws
  or grandparents to assist in child-rearing. The only thing these middle to
  upper-middle-class nuclear families with two working parents could do was pay
  someone to do it for them. So we witness the tremendous growth of daycare
  facilities, where children typically start at the age of 2 or 3 months. These
  children are essentially raised by paid professional surrogate parents.
  Places like KinderCare began to see this market as in need of some tapping.
  They, and others like them, developed marketing plans to attract parents,
  saying they did more than "just play." They offered a leg up to their
  clients, giving very young children not just blocks to play with, but
  exercises in math and reading. Anxious parents responded. KinderCare Learning
  centers comprises approximately 1,900 community-based centers in 38 states
  and the District of Columbia serving more than 200,000 children and employing
  approximately 41,000 people. Sales in 2005 topped $16 billion.

  3) Fear - The key rationale for public education -- as it is currently framed
  -- is to "compete in the global economy," i.e., beat the Chinese and the
  Indians at the game of global domination and "maintain our current high
  standard of living." We talk a lot about this as a country because there's
  concern that we're going to lose the game of global domination. But we talk
  about this -- to ourselves, mostly -- as parents because we're afraid that
  our kids are not going to make it. Make it out of high school. Make it into
  college. But also make it in life. Make it past drug addiction, pregnancy,
  sexually transmitted diseases. Make it past the all-consuming doubt of their
  teenage years and into somewhere called "happy" or perhaps "fulfilled."

  So take an anti-poverty program for inspiration, throw in some anxious,
  over-achieving parents who have outsourced childrearing to professionals, and
  now add a dash of fear about the future of the planet and you have the
  noxious cocktail that gives rise to such nonsense as "Kindergarten
  readiness." It's nonsense, but it makes perfect sense.

  Peter Campbell

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