Pre School

[Rapid Roger]

I just saw on the national news that some people are concerned about states and federal government may cut back on funding pre schools. They project that children will fall behind by twelve months on their education with out the proper funding??
The pre school that they used as an example tought one half day in Spanish and one half day using English??
My questions refer to "Fall behind who or what by twelve months?" Learning is a life time thing as far as i'm concerned.
The second question is "Why are we teaching pre schoolers Spanish along with English? Why not French or Russian or Japanese or why should they be taught anything besides the most common language of this country?"
And my last question is "Why should the American tax payer have to pay for "PRE SCHOOL"? isn't the standard Kindergarten through High School enough? It always has been in the past.

Rog

[cgswss]

Preschools have generally been a very successful endeavor to give our children a head start on their education.  I personally feel they've been very successful because they are privately funded not government-funded.  I know of no public preschools.  My guess would be that this is funds available to low income families.  Similar to the funds that are available for day care.

Now for privately funded preschools, they can teach whatever they want however they want, because they're privately funded.  If there are public preschools somewhere then I totally agree.  Why would they teach anything that our country's language.  English.

Now I realize that we have a very large Spanish speaking population.  And I fully agree that our public schools should offer classes designed to teach Spanish speaking persons the ability to speak and write in English.  But there is no way that public funded schools should be teaching any subject other than English in Spanish.

As far is publicly financed preschools, well, why stop there.  Why don't we just take the kids as soon as they're weaned and put them in the academy so that they are right-thinking?  I mean, they could be taught Obama arithmetic and proper wealth sharing behavior.

[julief]

We do pay for pre-school and have for years.  The criteria used to be learning diabled, non english speaking or income based.  That program started at 4 years old.  There is also one called head start which starts at age 3.  My sister (who is an elemtary teacher) says that they dropped the requirements a few years ago and anybody can send their kid to head start or pre-school.

[Chachi]

 OH don't get me started on this subject I might offend alot of people I don't mean to because my niece inlaw (the wifes niece) is sitting on pins and needles everyday to find out if she is going to have a job or not the next day (Due to cut backs) She teaches Kindergarden Speical Eduction and they feel at her school that is a class that is not needed however the spanish class is needed.
 

[tux_linux]

I can tell you what's it in Germany like:

Most children go to Kindergarten (age 3-6) and now - one of the good things the DDR(the east parts) had - even most children go to nursery (age 1-3). Each child has the right to go to a Kindergarten for the last year before school. The city must provide a place in a Kindergarten by law.

Our children (2 & 4 yo) goto nursery and Kindergarten. Both not community facilities, but private organized facilities with community benefits. I pay quite a lot of money for their first education each month. But it's worth it, at first one sees they are both ahead of their age. What fascinates me more is the every day will to learn something new. Kids do have this "mental hunger" and we should do everything to please it.

regards
Torsten

[beginner]

I could care less.  You live in the United States, learn our English language or get the hell out and go back to where ever you came from.