SO, OUR CHILDREN ARE DOOMED TO PRISON?

 

 

 

 

Tricia Smith Vaughan
January 22, 2006
NewsWithViews.com

I don’t think so!

But Leviathan evidently does. A kind reader recently wrote and told me that he’d been working in Ventura County all week, one county over from Los Angeles County, where I live; he’d been hearing the radio commercials that I’ve been hearing: My children are doomed because they haven’t gone to preschool.

My kind reader had homeschooled his five children and therefore, he knew that the commercials were, well, less than honest. He knew it; I knew it. But the general public, the sheeple, evidently, they are fooled.

According to the commercials, children who don’t attend preschool are much more likely to end up in prison and much less likely to go to college. Although neither my husband nor I went to preschool, we have so far managed to avoid prison and we have both received our master’s degrees. Amazing? Not really. We have more than enough education, despite our humble, non-preschool beginnings.

And so my kind reader, his wife, my husband, and I discern those commercials, take them apart and realize that the statistics supposedly proving that preschool keeps children out of prison are statistics that were not about most children at all; they were about children who came from very low-income families, children who truly did benefit from a few hours a day of institutional care. And who’s to say how those statistics would have changed if the huge tax burden that we have weren’t upon us? If we were truly free to keep our money and pursue our livelihoods, my guess is that most low-income people would be much better off.

But I digress. The bottom line here is that First Five of California, with celebrity help, is making moms all over California feel as though we’re cheating our children when we don’t turn them over to Leviathan, or to one of Leviathan’s public-private partnerships, within one hour or so after our child is potty trained.

"Right now in the United States there is a preschool crisis: families are on waiting lists and kids are going without services. This initiative will fix this problem in our nation's largest state,” says Rob Reiner, whose avuncular smile is affixed to the article from which this quote comes. Who couldn’t love All in the Family’s “Meathead”? Who couldn’t want to “fix” our children by guaranteeing government preschool?

I love the way that the government’s throwing money at something always fixes the problem. We’ve seen this fix before—in our government schools, for instance. Schools that receive the most money are the ones that are often doing the worst. Throwing money to the schools fixes things so well that people are running from these schools in droves.

Never mind, Leviathan is running with them, catching these children with charter schools, vouchers, and other things that allow us to have seemingly free money. One person actually wrote me about how wonderful it was to be receiving this free money for her child’s education. As long as we are naïve and ignorant enough of economics to believe that the government is going to give us a free anything, we’ll get exactly what we deserve: Leviathan’s wandering eye upon our families, homes, and children.

And now, Leviathan has teamed up with the celebrities that we adore to tell us that we may well be ruining our flesh and blood if we keep them with us, if we refuse to let them have supposed socialization with ten or twenty other three-year-olds all day, everyday.

Call us crazy, and those who swallow the commercials whole will, but there are some of us who actually believe that children learn better from the people who helped to bring them into the world. And some of us know that the family home is a much better place to learn social skills, manners, and the alphabet than an institutional setting.

Despite common sense, Leviathan roars: "We know good preschool programs put kids on the right road, through school and in life.” Gosh, how Los Angeles County Sherriff Lee Baca hates to be left out of the celebrity fray. He’s letting us know that we parents are no good for our children. Loving attention from a parent can never compete with the socialization skills that a child learns vying for a teacher’s attention with other preschoolers each day: "We can build these positive programs for children now, or build jail cells for many of them later. I know what I would rather do."

Yes, Mr. Baca, I know what I would rather do as well. I’d rather raise my own children than allow Leviathan’s certified teachers to do it.

But how long my plan will last? Reiner’s spending taxpayer money to run the campaign that makes parents think we’re not good enough to teach our children the alphabet, numbers, and other basics. According to the Sacramento Bee, “Reiner not only leads the initiative campaign, but also chairs the state commission that is paying for the ads—which carry the message that preschool is good for society at large.”

And what did people do a mere 40 or so years ago? Most people raised their own children, taught them the alphabet, and gave values and time to their progeny. Taxes were lower and people weren’t quite so gullible to the media’s propaganda. Many modern-day moms have told me how much they agonized over preschool. After dropping off a crying child who didn’t want to be separated from his or her mom, many moms have stiffened their upper lip and assured me that it had to be done, that it was the best thing for their child.

I can already see the e-mails, “But my child LOVES preschool!” Fine! It’s hard to find a person who believes more in parental choice than I do. Two or three days of three-hour sessions in preschool each week may indeed be beneficial to a child. If I were Jewish, for instance, I would probably send my young child to a Hebrew school. But twelve hours or so each week away from home isn’t what Leviathan is touting in these commercials.

Remember half-day kindergarten? I called my local government school to inquire about kindergarten last year for my oldest child; at the time, I was thinking about sending him there. And guess what? When I asked about half-day kindergarten, the person on the phone proudly told me that they didn’t do that anymore. They only have full-day kindergarten! For children who are four and five! And I was supposed to be impressed with my five-year-old’s being in school from 8 a.m. until after 2 p.m. More than six hours. Do you think Leviathan won’t do a similar thing one day with government preschool? Then there’s the whole after-school care thing. We’ll be lucky if we see our three-year-olds for two hours each day.

Let’s face it, within my lifetime we’ve been sold a false bill of goods. No Child Left Behind means what it says and Leviathan is trying hard to rope in our children as quickly and effortlessly as possible. I’ve written about B.F. Skinner and his utopian novel, Walden Two; you’re not paying attention if you think his ideas aren’t behind these universal preschool issues. Lots of people think of Skinner as a radical weirdo who supposedly kept his own child in a glass box. But to write him off as a freak is to deny what a strong influence his behavioralist theories have on our world today.

On an Internet search of Skinner, I found that behavioralism is not only alive, it is thriving. And Skinner’s devotees are encouraged “to work with and join the following networks, and to contribute what they know in respectful ways to these efforts.” It simply must be in a respectful way that we control other people’s behavior and choices, must it not? Here’s what I found when I checked out one of these networks, and found the United Nations Human Rights declaration, which the thriving behavioralist movement is encouraged to support:

“Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.”

Nice, isn’t it? That my children shall be socially protected, whether I want it or not. And ALL children shall enjoy the SAME social protection. That sentence should scare you into action right after you see its ending period. But if you’re still unfazed, take a look at the educational rights, from Article 26:

“Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.”

This mandate, which began to be fulfilled in the mid-1800s with the rise of forced education in the United States, reads more like a sentence, as in a prison sentence. If our elementary education is compulsory, then how can we possibly live in a free country? In a free society, education is voluntary. Our current elementary school system is, of course, compulsory. Wow, what a load of freedom! And if Reiner has his way, this free and compulsory system will start much earlier, in preschool. He says he wants preschool to be voluntary, but when the state will be supplying money for ALL children, whether or not the children attend preschool, it’s your guess as to how long it will be voluntary.

Oh, and here’s another educational gem from the utopian document:

“Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.”

I almost feel as though I don’t NEED to comment on that statement. Shouldn’t education be about, well, learning stuff? You know, that whole adding and subtracting and reading and writing thing? Doesn’t learning stuff lead to reading and writing and well, thinking for oneself? Understanding basic economics? A writer friend of mine once told me about a futuristic short story that he read in which there existed only one person on the planet who knew how to do math. That story seems far-fetched until we learn what education really means to the Skinnerians. When we have a well-educated mass, according to Skinner’s bunch, we’ll all be way too dumb to think for ourselves.

But here’s the kicker: “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.” Well, sure! As long as it is “directed to the full development of the human personality” and as long as it agrees with everything on the United Nations’ Agenda 21. Oh, and don’t worry your pretty little head about trying to teach your child the times tables. Who needs those antiquated things?

And so we should find it easy to relax when Skinner, in Walden Two, talks about how children are taken from their parents and raised in a warehouse-like setting, learning what some approved authority wants them to learn. “Our goal is to have every adult member of Walden Two [Skinner’s utopia] regard all our children as his own, and to have every child think of every adult as his parent” (Skinner, p. 132). Skinner apparently sees it as a good thing when the children interact with all adults equally and have no affinity for their true parents. As compulsory schooling takes our children away from us earlier and earlier, we can see how Skinner’s scenario can easily come to pass.

Believing that preschool can save our children from prison takes us one step closer to Skinner’s world. Universal preschool, in some form or another, is coming soon to your state, if it has not already hit. Meanwhile, we’re sitting back, taking in all the free money, and letting Leviathan inch into our homes and families. Go ahead and sit back and do nothing. And hope that your great-grandchildren remember, at least slightly, what free will and truly free thinking were all about. And hope that they remember their parents, from whom they will be separated, perhaps at birth.

References:

1, B.F. Skinner, Walden Two. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1976.
2, Parents Encouraging a Love of Learning in The First Five Years of Life
3, Fiftieth Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
4, Parents' Action For Children. Chairman Rob Reiner Announces California Universal Preschool Initiative
5, California Department of Education News Release 6, What Bob Reiner's Not Telling us About Universal Preeschool
7, Bob Reiner's Ads Use Taxpayers Money
8, Enmeshment: The Latest Way of Breaking Up Families

© 2006 Tricia S. Vaughan - All Rights Reserved