Preschool: Threat or Menace?

When we were looking for a preschool for Sarcasm Girl, way back in (gulp) 1993, we saw dozens of them--we were living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where there were any number, many of them boasting bilingual education (French and English, Chinese and English, Japanese and English) or monolingual non-English education (French), and other specialized studies. There was at least one Montessori school where they more or less told us "your child hasn't a prayer of making it in to Harvard unless she starts out here." When I told the nice lady that I was more concerned that my girl learn some social skills and citizenship, play a lot, and be exposed to numbers and letters, she looked shocked. SG didn't get in to that school (which was fine, we'd already crossed it off our list, and we couldn't have afforded it anyway). SG wound up going to The Brownstone School, a wonderful, homey place where the kids sang about cleaning up and using their words, and love was the first tool among all the teachers. Both of the kids went to Brownstone, and when I was in New York two weeks ago I dropped in to say Hi; they still remember both Sarcasm Girl and her sister with fondness and amusement.

So today I'm reading the Chronicle and notice an article about a study on preschool that finds that there are indeed significant gains for kids--particularly poor kids--in terms of language and math skills. The study also finds that there are significant behavioral problems among kids, particularly kids from wealthy families, who go to preschool. Sounds sinister, no? Particularly at a time when there's a proposition on the ballot to establish universal voluntary preschool.

Well, of course, I have a theory.

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