Whether the setting is a public institution or one that is Jewish, what preschool gives children is a head start, as the famous and highly regarded federal program that carries this name suggests. Where there is reinforcement of the socialization and educational benefits provided by preschool, there is an increased likelihood that the opportunities afforded by early childhood education will bear meaningful fruit down the road as the child goes up the grade ladder and then meets the challenges of adulthood. Where there is no reinforcement, whether in Judaic terms or in the more general sense of socialization, the early head start can be frittered away and lost.
Until recently, I traveled to work by subway. There is a scene I was witness to for decades, both in the subway and on the street as I walked from the subway to work. It is an image that has, deservedly or not, influenced much of my attitude toward early childhood education. The image or scene is of young children, typically I believe first or second graders, who are going on a trip. They are carefully supervised by teachers and paraprofessionals and are invariably well disciplined, with children from diverse ethnic backgrounds walking in pairs and holding hands, as they obey the instructions they are given.
There is another image, this one of schoolchildren several years older. They, too, are on a trip, but the discipline that was evident among younger children has started to peel away. There still are students who are well behaved, but there are others who are not. A few years later, when the middle school grades arrive, there is even more acting up, more unruliness. We know, of course, what happens even before the high school years arrive. Too many students are enveloped in social pathologies and the educational benefits of earlier years are often dissipated.
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While great attention has been paid to Mayor de Blasio’s proposed expansion of preschool, he has also called for an expansion of after-school programs for students in middle school, albeit with far less funding dedicated to these programs than to preschool. Because much of what is destructive in the lives of children occurs during the middle school years, initiatives that strengthen the educational experience between the 5th and 8th grades are crucial and deserve to be treated as a public priority. Unfortunately, the interest group activity that accompanies preschool advocacy dwarfs by a great margin the puny advocacy for an expansion of after-school programs in the middle school years.
It is a sure bet that when the state and city budgets are finalized, there will be significant additional funding for preschool education and minimalistic funding for after-school programs. This is another example of how priorities are misplaced, of how initiatives that are truly vital to the health of our society can get lost in the shuffle.
I do not know whether there are studies that test the extent to which school dropouts and other children who are not benefiting much from formal education attended preschool. Likely, a significant number of those who were once preschoolers have already been severely damaged. Likely as well, there are a significant number of those who attended government-funded preschool who continue to do well and this is testimony to the value of well-crafted preschool programs.
Yet there is a lesson for us to learn. Preschool by itself is not a magic potion that can undo the damage caused by family dysfunction or the damage caused by the street or the damage caused by highly addictive cultural forces that impel children away from formal learning. More than ever, schooling competes with attractions and impulses that wean children away from study and from learning. As technology advances, the effort to get children to focus on formal learning becomes ever more difficult.
