I want to protest in the strongest possible terms two stories in the Oct 14 News by Tyler Olsen; they look very much like a one-two punch of propaganda from a malignant campaign to force so-called early childhood ‘education’ on British Columbia families.
The first story was headlined Number of ‘vulnerable’ children entering school on the rise, with the sub-head Increase related to lack of core ‘emotional and social competencies’”
The ‘vulnerabilities’ and ‘emotional and social competencies’ are vaguely explained as a lack of self-control; but there is no indication of any research that identifies the cause of that lack.
This gobbledegook mirrors the undefined propaganda terminology used to promote UBC’s “Human Early Learning Partnership” (HELP)—a scam that makes unsubstantiated claims that its programs will “save $400 billion” by taking very young children out of the care of their mothers and brainwashing them in militant Secuarism at public (and taxpayer-funded) institutions.
HELP Director (and World Bank consultant) Clyde Hertzman has falsely argued that Nobel prize-winning economist James Heckman supports HELP’s claims for such “investment” returns. But Heckman actually opposes these social mega-projects, saying: “Advocates and supporters of universal preschool often use existing research for purely political purposes... the solid evidence for the effectiveness of early interventions is limited to those conducted on disadvantaged populations,” and, “None of this evidence supports universal preschool programs.”
In an apparent conflict of interest, behind the scenes the BC government pays for HELP’s propaganda. Victoria funds HELP not only to design, and advise on, but also to promote and evaluate daycare, “Strong Start” and all-day kindergarten.
HELP is also funded to conduct the massive and invasive data collection effort that obtains personal data on all BC children “from pre-conception to young adulthood”. HELP aims to acquire our private information, including medical, tax, hospital, school, pharmaceutical, and census records.
School funding for such things as repairs and sport are being cut while plans go ahead to spend over $151 million on all-day kindergarten, and increase funding to Strong Start school drop-in programs for 0-5 year olds. Filling “underutilized school space” with very young children is part of HELP’s vision. Why are so many school spaces “underutilized”? Perhaps because, with the help of annual donations of BCTF members’ dues to the Lower Mainland’s abortion mills, there are hundreds of thousands of missing children.
What would really help? De-fund HELP a, and re-direct the money being spent for all-day kindergarten and Strong Start to enable families better to raise and socialize their own children—a much healthier and more natural venue.
These massive social engineering projects ignore mountains of research showing the harm day-care does to children—especially younger children, who are the very target of HELP and the grossly mis-named “Strong Start” program. The recent news reports of the harm done by Quebec’s massively subsidized daycare should sound alarm bells for BC.
These programs are a combination of jobs-creation for the Early Childhood ‘Education’ industry’s élite (the ones who teach the ECE courses, not the worker-drones they train for minimum-wage daycare jobs); and social engineering a la Rousseau, whose education theories today dominate Secular education.
The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau adopted Plato’s idea that children should be taken from their families as soon as they are weaned, and raised by the state to promote ‘egalitarianism’. Rousseau himself fathered three (illegitimate) children, but he did not raise them; instead he gave them to a foundling home, but contributed nothing to their support. This was the entire ‘parenting’ experience of the author of the influential book Emile: The Education of a Young Man—a book whose precepts dominate modern teacher training and other social engineering programs today.
Emile was, of course, a work of fiction. Nevertheless, Rousseau was able to put Emile’s concepts into practice; he undertook the education of one (1) young man. That young man was Maximilien Robespierre, who grew up to be the instigator of the “Reign of Terror” during the French Revolution!
Perhaps we should re-think the models we choose for the manipulation and social engineering of the next generation of Canadians.
It’s worth noting that students who attend private religious schools are consistently a year ahead of their age-peers in the public schools; and that home-schooled children, on average, are a further year ahead of their age-peers in private schools. Little wonder top universities are now seeking out home-schooled students: they are much less likely to require remedial reading courses in their freshman year.
Home is a much better place for children. If we squandered less money on programs like StrongStart and HELP, we could reduce taxes, and ease the financial pressure on families to have both parents in the work-force.
Ron Gray