Word: preschooling
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...approved, the Family Independence Program will be stringently applied. All families on welfare, including women with infants as young as six months, would be enrolled within two years. Other states' workfare programs exempt mothers of preschool children. In Washington, mothers unable to work due to disability or who must care for an infirm family member will continue to receive regular benefits. Those who can work yet refuse to do so will have their grants...
Debra Clay, 34, a working librarian in Houston, felt every inch the caring parent. At the pricey Creme de la Creme preschool learning center, her eight- month-old daughter Kendall peered at two red dots on a white flash card held by a teacher, who called out, "Two!" As new cards came up, the teacher chanted the numbers while Kendall acknowledged the exercise with an occasional gurgle. Down the hall, Kendall's four-year-old sister Katie chirped, "Un, deux, trois . . ." mimicking the accent of her Parisian instructor. Elsewhere around Creme de la Creme, 150 other tots and toddlers grappled...
...educators, such as California School Superintendent Bill Honig and State Commissioners Gerald Tirozzi of Connecticut and Gordon Ambach of New York, applaud the preschool push as providing more children with better education sooner. Comments Roberta Babb, director of Creme de la Creme: "For a long time, people didn't realize all the things that a little mind is capable of. We give them a big head start for school." But others are dismayed by a parental mania to overstuff little minds that are not ready. At the recent convention in Atlanta of the National Association of Independent Schools, hothousing...
Thus far the only proven beneficiaries of preschool programs have been culturally deprived youngsters whose work, at least in the early grades, has been helped by the federally funded Head Start program. But the sustained benefits of Head Start have been questioned. Moreover, says Yale Psychologist Edward Zigler, director of child development for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in the Nixon Administration, early learning has "no long-term effect on middle-class kids." Zigler caustically condemns hothousing as a yuppie phenomenon, in which parents try to transfer their own hyperambitious goals to children. Irving Sigel, distinguished research scientist...
There are other well-reasoned objections to workfare: that it displaces people in the regular labor force; that by exempting single parents with preschool-age children, it excludes 60% of all adult AFDC recipients; that, as Ohio has experienced, welfare savings can be less than program costs; that workfare places too much emphasis on getting clients into the job market quickly rather than enrolling them in education courses that could help them gain entry to more useful and lucrative lines of work...