Education Committee held a hearing yesterday on HB 4662 which would amend the Revised School Code to (1) require school districts to provide kindergarten and (2) require parents to send five-year-olds to school.
Currently under the law, five-year-olds have the right to attend school, but are not required to do so. The law specifies instead that every parent, guardian, or other person having control and charge of a child from the age of six to the child's 16th birthday must send that child to a public school during the entire school year. (The law has exceptions for private schooling and home schooling, among other things.) House Bill 4662 would make the mandatory school attendance requirement apply at the age of five.
Additionally, in committee yesterday, a substitute bill was submitted to mandate all-day kindergarten.
Despite the School Code 380.10 which says that the education of children is that of the parents alone, when I asked Louise Somalski, the legislative director of the Michigan Federation of Teachers the question "Who is responsible for making sure our kids actaully get an education", I first got a "deer in the headlights" look. Finally, Louise recovered and answered that it was her belief that the reponsibility for educating our children rested with "society." Wow, that's a comforting thought!
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
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10 comments:
What's next? Mandatory preschool for 3 and 4 year olds? This is silly. And what impact do these bills have on homeschoolers?
Buy you books and send you to school, Jack. Don't you know that the Dems firmly believe IT TAKES A VILLAGE (GOVERNMENT)TO RAISE A CHILD. You know that book that was written by the Village...............
The mandatory requirements will eventually play down to preschool and head start programs becoming mandatory as well.
There are pushes to increase federal grant programs for that purpose.
The concept of younger attendance is nothing new and is really a ploy because of the single parents that would rather be untied from their children because it is too much for them to handle, but yet the state does not require an equal sharing of custodial roles between parents.
State bureaucracies and bad parenting models, like a child having more access to government programs than to biological parents, is bad public policy.
Snap out of it America... Children need parents, not stronger government.
Lary Holland
http://www.familycourtreports.com/serendipity
Jack, Back in the late 80's and early 90's many were fighting what was known as the Michigan Model for Comprehensive Health Education. (Watch out for any legislation or proposals that claim to be "comprehensive.") A bureaucrat with the Department of Ed by the name of Don Sweeney testified before the Senate Appropriations Committe chaired by Dan DeGrow. I believe Sweeney worked exclusively on the development and implementation of that program.
During the testimony, he was asked whose was best suited to "raise our children." He answered with words to the effect that, "The public schools are the best institution to raise our children." He confirmed his statement when asked if that was what he really meant.
The education bureaucrats are still around!
Dar VanderArk
See...all this time I thought it took a "Village" to do everything.
Wonderful. I was just thinking about how if only the government had more control over educating my kids how much better they'll turn out
This is pretty fascinating- it all seems to be about per-pupil funding; more students=more money required. Hide your wallets, folks!
Someone needs to educate Ms. Somalski on a little factoid- the state does not own our kids. It doesn't "take a village," it takes involved parents to turn out high school graduates (not drop-outs) who are prepared to enter the workforce or enter college.
I can't understand what legislators are thinking. Our oldest child's birthday is late in October and we had the choice of sending him to kindergarten when he was five or holding him back until he was six. We held him back am I am glad we did.
Starting kids earlier also puts them in college at a younger age. My wife worked in the University of Michigan housing department and saw seventeen year old kids come into her office completely unprepared. Kids have a hard enough time dealing with being independent for the first time in their lives, fighting for grades, and dealing with all the opportunities that are thrown at them, both good and bad, and doing all this at eighteen or nineteen years old. It is not a good environment for a seventeen year old to be put into and expect them to succeed.
Many parents choose to send their child to preschool, early fives, head start and other programs designed to teach them social skills and prepare them for school. Parents should have the choice when to send their children to school and determine what is best for their child based on the child's development. Who knows what is best for our children, the government?
Why don't we just implant a computer chip in our kids when they are born, and turn them over to the state for indoctrination, er, education.
"We need to get beyond the idea that there is someone else's child."
--Hillary Clinton, 1998
I'd like to second what Anonymous above me said, that younger kids aren't ready for independence. I'd like to add that throughout history most younger kids *were* ready for a large degree of independence at 17. Yet today when we keep kids out of the real world and in school most of their lives, we make them dependent on that system - we stunt their growth. Spending real time with families and community in a natural environment - which occurs only outside of school - is at least as essential for kids as classroom learning.
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