Formspring Question #428--Head Start Stalled at the Stsrting Line Edition

Do you like head start and the government helping to fund it?

No. It has been a $7.3 billion a year failure for fifty years. Acco0rding to this Health and Human Services sponsored study, kids who have taken part in Head Start are no better off than kids who have not been part of the program. even progressives like Joe Klein are now questioning the value of funding the failed program.

Head Start is a prime example of progressives missing the cultural root of a problem and proposing government take over to throw away mountains of tax payers dollars towards their solution. Head Start largely provides babysitting and very basic education for three and four year olds. Kids that age require nurturing in order to prepare them for success in school. Government workers are no substitute for parental guidance. The problem is that parents are not doing their job.

These parents are low income, probably on some social benefit program, probably unwed, probably in a squalid, crime ridden environment, and probably have not stopped at one kid, either. This is the root of the problem--young people who are not mature enough, nor financially stable enough to have children are having them anyway. It is not a problem the government can solve. Indeed, many expensive social benefits programs entrap these people and create generations of a poor underclass dependent on taxpayer money with no escape. Providing no encouragement to escape, either.

No, I do not think abortion is a fantastic solution to the problem, no matter what Ruth Bader Ginsburg believes about the merciful genocide of the unborn poor.. if we are trying to teach personal responsibility to adults and encourage kids to make something out of themselves, holding the right to kill unborn children as a virtuous option encourages neither.

Since this question is an obvious follow up to my support for vouchers, I will reiterate a voucher program will get parents more involved in their child’s education. At the very least, they will have the power to make the choice where their child earns his or her education. If a voucher system worked ideally, educational institutions would run on free market principles and therefore have to compete for voucher dollars. The competition would improve the quality of education for all, but I fear we are too brainwashed by progressivism to even consider the idea. Mitt Romney is not going to make any significant steps towards creating a wide-spread voucher system. I am cynical enough to think it is a pet issue conservatives are going to trot out every election cycle to entice social conservatives, then never do anything more with it.