Nevada Families Eagle Forum

186 Ryndon Unit 12, Elko, Nevada 89801, 775-397-6859, Sparks 775-356-0105

Janine Hansen  director@nevadafamilies.org

April 05, 2009 In the Year of Our Lord, 12:20pm

 Please forward to everyone you know!  Acknowledgement appreciated.

You can watch the Legislature live at: http://www.leg.state.nv.us/audio/AudioVideo.cfm

Find out who your Senator and Assemblyman is: www.leg.state.nv.us

OPPOSE SB378 Government Plans to Institutionalize Preschoolers

The hearing was on Friday.  The vote will be sometime this week.

 SB378 sets up regulations, standards and guidelines for government pre-kindergarten education. We all know it is a precursor to the government implementing preschool education. It has long been the goal of the Teachers Union, the National Education Association, to create more jobs for teachers through promoting preschool programs from birth to eight years old.  See NEA resolutions below.  Also below, is the email I sent to the committee and asked to be place on the record, which further explains the far reaching negative consequences of the bill. One issue I didn’t mention is the future cost. 

 MESSAGE: Vote NO on SB378 Don’t make plans to institutionalize preschoolers. We need to promote mother care not government care of little children.   

 CONTACT: Senate Health & Education Committee

Email addresses include first initial and last name of legislators. 

Chairman vweiner@sen.state.nv.us , jwoodhouse@sen.state.nv.us , shorsford@sen.state.nv.us , sbreeden@sen.state.nv.us , mwashington@sen.state.nv.us , bcegavske@sen.state.nv.us , dnolan@sen.state.nv.us

 Contact by Phone:   Northern Nevada 775-684-6789, Southern Nevada 702-486-2626,

Toll Free 800-978-2878 Toll free fax: 866-543-9941

 Janine Hansen’s email to the committee:

I have a B.S. degree in Child Development and Family Relations from Brigham Young University.   I have four children and seven grandchildren. For most of my adult life, I have taught music and other classes to young children.

 Although, SB378 just sets up regulations, standards and guidelines for pre-kindergarten education, we all know it is a precursor to the schools implementing preschool education.  It has long been the goal of the Teachers Union, the National Education Association to create more jobs for teachers through promoting preschool programs from birth to eight years old. 

 2008 NEA Resolution: B-1. Early Childhood Education. The National Education Association supports early childhood education programs in the public schools for children from birth through age eight. The Association also supports a high-quality program of transition from home and/or preschool to the public kindergarten or first grade. The Association also believes that early childhood education programs should include a full continuum of services for parents/guardians and children, including child-care, child development, developmentally appropriate and diversity-based curricula, special education, and appropriate bias-free screening devices. The Association believes that federal legislation should be enacted to assist in organizing the implementation of fully funded early childhood education programs offered through the public schools. These programs must be available to all children on an equal basis and should include mandatory kindergarten with compulsory attendance.

 Young children do not thrive in long hours of institutionalized structured care.  This is especially true of little boys who often develop behavioral and learning problems, which under mother/home care would not be exhibited. It’s a matter of development and they almost always grow out of the behavior and learning problems if given sufficient time to mature in an unstructured learning environment. If forced into institutionalized structured situation boys have a difficult time every overcoming these developmental challenges. This is why so many boys in the government schools are in remedial classes and placed on Ritalin and other drugs---to make them sit still and pay attention.

 

In Dr. Raymond Moore’s book, School Can Wait, he identifies over 6,000 studies which cover the physical, mental, emotional, social, leadership, behavioral, and maturational development of children.  The book conclusively shows that later rather than earlier institutional schooling for children leads to their academic, social, and leadership success in school.  Eight years old is the best age to start formal education. Children who wait until eight catch up and surpass children who have been placed in structured learning environments within a few months.

 

“As Cato Institute director of education and child policy Darcy Ann Olsen pointed out in Human Events (9-01-00), even Edward Zigler, one of the founders of Head Start and a longtime academic advocate of preschool programs, stated in 1987 (during the late 1980s push for federal babysitting): "This is not the first time universal preschool education has been proposed . . . The arguments in favor of preschool were that it would reduce school failure, lower dropout rates, increase test scores, and produce a generation of more competent high school graduates. . . Preschool education will achieve none of these results."

 

In 2002, “the results of a major research study of child care and development showed that children who spend more hours per week in non-parental child care have more behavior problems, including aggressive, defiant and disobedient behavior in kindergarten. This study by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) followed a group of more than 1,300 children in 10 different states through their first seven years of life. This study also found that, in general, "family characteristics and the quality of the mother's relationship with the child were stronger predictors of children's development than child care factors."

 

We should be passing government policies that encourage mother and family care of preschool children, not spending or planning to spend more tax dollars placing more financial burdens on families forcing mothers out of the home. 

 

Please vote NO on SB378.  We need mother care not institutional government care of children. 

Thank you, Janine Hansen

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