What is the true purpose of public education?
According to a new research study reported in the WSJ, it appears to be all about career-prep:
Can finger-painting, cup-stacking and learning to share set you up for a stellar career?
Research says yes, according to Dr. Celia Ayala, chief executive officer of Los Angeles Universal Preschool, a nonprofit that funds 325 schools in Los Angeles County, Calif., using money from tobacco taxes.
“When they enter kindergarten ready to thrive with all the social, emotional and cognitive skills, they perform at grade level or above,” she said. “When they don’t, that’s where that achievement gap starts.”
Note: don’t ask why money from tobacco taxes is being used to fund preschool research nonprofits.
There’s a lot at stake here– not only does pre-school appear to grant an advantage, but NOT doing appears to confer disadvantages such as increasing the likelihood of becoming a “special needs” student:
Kids without that early boost have been shown to be more likely to get special-needs services, be held back a grade or two, get in trouble with the law and become teen parents. Preschool alumni have a better chance, she said.
Today, a child’s life ends before it even begins:
“Those who go to preschool will go on to university, will have a graduate education, and their income level will radically improve,” she said.
Implication: don’t go to preschool, don’t go to university, don’t get a graduate education, watch your income level stagnate or decline, eventually you’ll probably kill yourself through obesity or suicide in a depressed state of lifetime unaccomplishment.
The article goes on the explain that preschool could hold “the key to job success in adult life” and warns of the sorrows of children who don’t receive an education in preschool because they’re spending time with “parents or caregivers.” Yes, there is nothing being learned there, apparently. Nothing valuable, at least.
But valuable to whom? And for what?
Why, valuable to society, for the purpose of making the child a good little worker! The definition of success is one who works productively for others. The purpose of education is not to develop a society of individuals, but a society of workers.
Or, as one French director of an “ecole maternelle” put it, the object is to give them social skills “to be students and citizens,” a “citizen” being one who obediently does what others ask of him.
Meanwhile, policymakers in the US are big on preschool:
Policymakers in the U.S. are most concerned about eliminating the gap between kids who do well in school, going on to college and successful careers, and those who fall behind. Preschool, say policymakers, offers educators the best shot for getting children of varying backgrounds on equal footing.
There’s a codeword in there– “equal”. Equal means same. Same means, “not different.” But wait, individuals ARE different. They have different likes and dislikes, different skills and aptitudes. How can beings who are inherently different, ever be equal? And why would policymakers care? How does being “equal” help one succeed at living ONE’S OWN life?
Answer– it doesn’t. It isn’t about living one’s life. Sameness, equality, is being sought to create an army of interchangeable cogs to go on society’s wheel. Then, the elites spin the wheel. And round go all the equal people, never asking why.
Don’t worry, though. Policymakers at Department of Education won’t let anyone fail to be equal. They’re “equal” to the task:
“We’re really focusing on the cradle-to-career continuum,” said Steven Hicks, special assistant for early learning at the federal Department of Education, where there has been a recent shift as officials realize “we need to start earlier.”
Once people are in the work force, the Social Security Administration is responsible for the “career-to-grave continuum”. Which means no matter what point in the continuum you’re at during your life, the State is there to help you out, with kid gloves, of course.
Although most education funding happens at the state level, the federal government has been trying to fuel a preschool wave with a half-billion dollars in challenge grants funded in January. The next five states in line will share $133 million in preschool money this year. Call it a pre-job-training program.
Are you starting to get the picture here? You’re being trained from the moment you develop the mental, emotional and conceptual faculties to see yourself as a differentiated “other” in the world, to prepare to work for someone else. This is scary stuff. And it’s all coming in the innocuous guise of “equality” for all.
Most teachers and parents would agree that early-childhood education matters to a child’s trajectory in life. But with budgets stretched around the country, a lack of money is forcing some states to make choices about scarce education dollars. Too bad, the DoE thinks.
“Secretary Duncan says there are smart investments and some things you can do that are not so smart, and one of those is cutting early childhood education,” Hicks said.
To calculating socialists running short on Other People’s Money, future worker bees are like hot dogs from the corner stand– “Get ’em while they’re young!”
This article, intentionally or not, is coincidentally the most timely and blatantly obvious confirmation of Stirner’s false principle of education. Nobody in this article is aiming at an educational system which produces “self-developed” individuals. The name of the game is forming human clay into pre-determined molds appropriate to other people’s ends.
It is distinctly anti-individual. It’s a quiet and brutal form of slavery-as-virtue.
A House Rises 