My wife and I run a childcare- well, she runs it, and I help as much as I can between shifts.
All children old enough to walk about are wee robots designed to self-destruct as creatively as possible. Your job is to toss monkey wrenches into their gears and sand in their gas tanks all day so they can get home alive. Astounding, really, how ambitious the little dudes are.
It would be grand to design system where you don’t have to have a second parent work full time to afford childcare so they can afford to work full time, but in its absence “keep the toddlers from suiciding” really should be the guiding principle rather than setting them up for algebra classes or whatever.
And also that there is nothing wrong with a bunch of 3 year olds spending the afternoon watching Aquanaut’s. First of all, because trying to use that time to teach reading or math has no long term benefits and may indeed be harmful. Second, not every moment in life needs to be productive.
The licensure & expansion for pre-K especially aggravates me because there are so many more essential uses for that money in public ed. Teacher salaries, building infrastructure, internet to rural areas, goddamned bus driver shortages--these are all huge issues that we need to fix. But politicians always prefer putting their name on new initiatives over quietly fixing existing issues.
Thank you for highlighting the role of schools in keeping kids safe, fed, and warm. I grew up in Minnesota, and my mom taught special education in a low-income, majority-minority high school for most of her career. The school provided breakfast as well as lunch and after school snacks to any child who wanted them. It also provided something I had never thought about before: heat during Minnesota’s brutal, long winter.
My mom told me something once that broke my heart: you know how, as kids, we all couldn’t wait for weekends, holidays, and summer vacation? How we would get so excited and happy? Well, my mom’s students dreaded school breaks. They would linger after school on Friday afternoons and on the last day before break until they had to be kicked out. My mom said she could see them getting progressively sadder as the breaks approached. Think about how different their world is from that of most policymakers.
These kids were not heading to college; it was counted a success if they were able to pass the state reading test and graduate. The school did not give them the kind of intense academic education most policymakers say we should strive for. The school gave them something much more important: a place to let down their guards and be cared for.
My wife is a Kindergarten teacher and her other main task is to properly socialize the 10-30% of kids who's parents didn't do it. If kids don't learn how to play with others by 4 or 5 then they have a very tough life ahead of them.
We chose a play based childcare center -- it was licensed, but the caregivers were not teaching, they were setting up different play activities for the kids to select. But when my son arrived at kindergarten not yet reading it took a few weeks before he made the connection between the words he understood orally and those on the page and when his teacher explained that the silent e makes the other vowel in the word "say its name" he was off and reading Harry Potter to himself by the end of the year. I guess I am saying that when kids are ready to learn to read they will if they have decent support.
So would you be on board with Matt Yglesias' view that the Democrats' current child care proposal is a mess, and should be thrown out in favor of a permanent cash benefit?
I think there's a legitimate case to be made that free government child care discriminates against women who want to be stay-at-home moms. The counterargument would be that for some children (the ones from disadvantaged backgrounds, possibly) pre-K is more enriching than staying home with mom and ought to be encouraged, even if it means providing social benefits in a way that restricts parental choice. But if you're right that pre-K doesn't do very much for poor kids, then the case for a cash child benefit is pretty strong.
The license and credential requirements are great for pumping federal money into state and local college systems. My city offered a "last dollar" scholarship for child development programs, but these workers are so poor that they all qualify for federal financial aid unless they are undocumented
The problem is that it's hard to earn a living wage while you're also going to college just to keep your childcare job -- so it was still a financial burden for these workers as the requirements kept increasing. (And you can make more money working at the gas station, so I wonder how they're even finding new workers these days.)
Like Freddie said, we just need higher wages for all childcare workers, and it has to come from the government. Parents don't make enough to pay someone else's entire salary (or even 1/5 plus overhead at a center) -- it's a burden for parents and not enough for workers.
There is actually some evidence that mandatory or induced pre-K can be a little harmful for kids in terms of social adjustment (e.g. https://www.nber.org/papers/w11832 - that is just one study, there have been others). The problem is that putting very young children in a collective setting away from their parents can lead to stress and aggression. I didn't quite get this until I observed it with my own children. In my experience "official" pre-K can actually be worse than less formal child care because there are procedures and discipline that work for older kids but are inappropriate for say 3 year olds -- 3 year olds and 5 or 6 year olds are very different.
"And it devalues the true purpose of childcare, which is also an underrated aspect of public schools: keeping children alive when their parents can’t watch them."
Single biggest job of principals during the pandemic: getting the free lunches distributed.
I agree with all this. In fact, I'd be in favor of removing the college degree requirement from k-3 in favor of a knowledge test. All we're doing is constantly lowering the college degree standard to push out more people for jobs that don't need college knowledge.
I would describe myself as having an economically stable life situation, but subsidized childcare would literally be life changing.
My wife and I run a childcare- well, she runs it, and I help as much as I can between shifts.
All children old enough to walk about are wee robots designed to self-destruct as creatively as possible. Your job is to toss monkey wrenches into their gears and sand in their gas tanks all day so they can get home alive. Astounding, really, how ambitious the little dudes are.
It would be grand to design system where you don’t have to have a second parent work full time to afford childcare so they can afford to work full time, but in its absence “keep the toddlers from suiciding” really should be the guiding principle rather than setting them up for algebra classes or whatever.
And also that there is nothing wrong with a bunch of 3 year olds spending the afternoon watching Aquanaut’s. First of all, because trying to use that time to teach reading or math has no long term benefits and may indeed be harmful. Second, not every moment in life needs to be productive.
This topic is a good one for your new short-form kick!
The licensure & expansion for pre-K especially aggravates me because there are so many more essential uses for that money in public ed. Teacher salaries, building infrastructure, internet to rural areas, goddamned bus driver shortages--these are all huge issues that we need to fix. But politicians always prefer putting their name on new initiatives over quietly fixing existing issues.
Licensure of grandparents or extended family who watch so many children not required.
Really wish this one was longer ....
Very little to do with the piece, but literally nothing I read about children makes me want to have any.
Thank you for highlighting the role of schools in keeping kids safe, fed, and warm. I grew up in Minnesota, and my mom taught special education in a low-income, majority-minority high school for most of her career. The school provided breakfast as well as lunch and after school snacks to any child who wanted them. It also provided something I had never thought about before: heat during Minnesota’s brutal, long winter.
My mom told me something once that broke my heart: you know how, as kids, we all couldn’t wait for weekends, holidays, and summer vacation? How we would get so excited and happy? Well, my mom’s students dreaded school breaks. They would linger after school on Friday afternoons and on the last day before break until they had to be kicked out. My mom said she could see them getting progressively sadder as the breaks approached. Think about how different their world is from that of most policymakers.
These kids were not heading to college; it was counted a success if they were able to pass the state reading test and graduate. The school did not give them the kind of intense academic education most policymakers say we should strive for. The school gave them something much more important: a place to let down their guards and be cared for.
My wife is a Kindergarten teacher and her other main task is to properly socialize the 10-30% of kids who's parents didn't do it. If kids don't learn how to play with others by 4 or 5 then they have a very tough life ahead of them.
We chose a play based childcare center -- it was licensed, but the caregivers were not teaching, they were setting up different play activities for the kids to select. But when my son arrived at kindergarten not yet reading it took a few weeks before he made the connection between the words he understood orally and those on the page and when his teacher explained that the silent e makes the other vowel in the word "say its name" he was off and reading Harry Potter to himself by the end of the year. I guess I am saying that when kids are ready to learn to read they will if they have decent support.
So would you be on board with Matt Yglesias' view that the Democrats' current child care proposal is a mess, and should be thrown out in favor of a permanent cash benefit?
I think there's a legitimate case to be made that free government child care discriminates against women who want to be stay-at-home moms. The counterargument would be that for some children (the ones from disadvantaged backgrounds, possibly) pre-K is more enriching than staying home with mom and ought to be encouraged, even if it means providing social benefits in a way that restricts parental choice. But if you're right that pre-K doesn't do very much for poor kids, then the case for a cash child benefit is pretty strong.
The license and credential requirements are great for pumping federal money into state and local college systems. My city offered a "last dollar" scholarship for child development programs, but these workers are so poor that they all qualify for federal financial aid unless they are undocumented
The problem is that it's hard to earn a living wage while you're also going to college just to keep your childcare job -- so it was still a financial burden for these workers as the requirements kept increasing. (And you can make more money working at the gas station, so I wonder how they're even finding new workers these days.)
Like Freddie said, we just need higher wages for all childcare workers, and it has to come from the government. Parents don't make enough to pay someone else's entire salary (or even 1/5 plus overhead at a center) -- it's a burden for parents and not enough for workers.
There is actually some evidence that mandatory or induced pre-K can be a little harmful for kids in terms of social adjustment (e.g. https://www.nber.org/papers/w11832 - that is just one study, there have been others). The problem is that putting very young children in a collective setting away from their parents can lead to stress and aggression. I didn't quite get this until I observed it with my own children. In my experience "official" pre-K can actually be worse than less formal child care because there are procedures and discipline that work for older kids but are inappropriate for say 3 year olds -- 3 year olds and 5 or 6 year olds are very different.
"And it devalues the true purpose of childcare, which is also an underrated aspect of public schools: keeping children alive when their parents can’t watch them."
Single biggest job of principals during the pandemic: getting the free lunches distributed.
I agree with all this. In fact, I'd be in favor of removing the college degree requirement from k-3 in favor of a knowledge test. All we're doing is constantly lowering the college degree standard to push out more people for jobs that don't need college knowledge.