American (Re)Education

The highly excitable and sometimes brilliant Steve Sailer gets the universal pre-K hoax half right in his post here.

Sailer posits the universal pre-K push is (1) a racist scheme to take poor, black children from their parent(s) and (2) a government power grab. 'Puter thinks it is certainly the latter, but not the former. As in all things political, 'Puter asks cui bono? Whom does universal pre-K benefit?

Universal pre-K benefits, first and foremost, unions. Forcing Americans to turn over their kids to government control a full year earlier will create tens of thousands of new unionized jobs. President Obama and his union henchmen want nothing more than to return the unions to the halcyon days of the 1950s and 1960s.

And, if the unions benefit, the Democrat party also benefits. Unions nearly universally support Democrat candidates. With the increase in union jobs comes an increase in union dues, and a commensurate increase in the amount of union funds available to elect Democrats.

Tangentially, parents who treat public schooling as day care also benefit. Universal pre-K permits middle class parents to shift day care costs to the taxpayers a full year earlier than now. In New York, the state and the unions have been trying to cram universal pre-K down local districts' throats for years. Only recently, with middle and upper class parents realizing that they can get the government to pay for their day care, has the idea started to catch on.

Who loses? Children. Universal pre-K has not been conclusively shown to offer a lasting benefit to children. In fact, Head Start (i.e., universal pre-K for the poor) studies have shown that any initial program benefit quickly evaporates over time. And, money wasted on repackaging a failed idea is unavailable for new, promising programs. Like non-unionized charter schools and voucher programs, for example.

So, to recap: (1) Sailer is half right; (2) unions are screwing the kids again; (3) Democrats are screwing kids again to benefit their union henchmen; (4) selfish parents are complicit in selling out their kids; and (5) kids are worse off than before.

Nice job, Obama Administration!