Don't let the 'educationists' get their hands on kids even earlier

I am NOT an expert. I don’t even play one on TV. I am also not a member in the ever-expanding Education Establishment. I do, however, have a modicum of common sense. I am also capable of sorting wheat from chaff when listening to, or reading, what passes for an educationist’s expertise. After separating said wheat from chaff in the “Educators back Early Edge plan” on the March 15 Inter Lake Opinion Page, I found myself neck deep in chaff. 

The federal government has had a pre-K program for too many years called Head Start. Its success has been mostly limited to fatter bank accounts for those who lobby for, administer, and operate the program. Study after study has shown little, if any, advantage as those students progress through school  Why replicate that which has NOT proven successful? 

If Montana’s graduation rate is 85 percent, why should we subscribe to any program used by school systems with significantly lower graduation rates? I can’t wait for the refrain from the enlightened that socialism/communism would have worked if only they had been in charge.

References to affirmative research by Harvard, Georgetown, and University of Chicago Economists leave me shaking my head. Are these not the learned institutions who have vexed us with economic theories which are responsible, in large measure, for our current $18 trillion federal debt? 

I also wonder at their conclusion that pre-K reduces “drop-out and crime rates.” If anything, Montana’s graduation rates are so high, and its crime rates so low, that most states should be green with envy. But educationists almost always follow the next idea to come along. Even if those ideas are detrimental to their classroom captives.

The rest of the referenced letter is routine government employee boilerplate begging the mundanes of Montana to shell out more of their mostly hard-earned dollars for additional “investment in Montana’s economic and educational future.” Just what you’d expect to come out the east end of a west-bound horse. 

The only thing missing from that boiler plate was the word “infrastructure.” But, we know that’ll come later.

Here’s a suggestion from an old codger with open eyes and an un-indoctrinated mind. Leave the kids alone for another year, two years for boys, before locking them up in some educationist’s idea of a “learning environment.” Let kids be kids for a while longer. Let them explore their world. Let them think things through on their own. Let their minds wander. Who knows? They might get lucky and their learning environment will be the kitchen table where Mom and Dad home-school them. That, folks, would be a win-win.

Wheeler is a resident of Kalispell.