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You have got to be kidding! Will "universal preschool" for 3-4-year old improve academic achievement over the long term? Repeat..You've got to be kidding!

What role does the parent play? You get the children up and off to school, preschool, that is, pick them up greet them, attempt to interact with them and off to bed. Where's the bonding time? Where's the time to show them, teach them you're values?

When do children get to be children?

Isn't there enough stress on children in general without deliberately adding more?

Teachers, good teachers, are maxed out as well. Beside over-crowed class rooms, they have to slow up the teaching process to teach English to those that either can't understand it, or only speak very little English (I am of European descent my grand mother spoke Lithuanian/broken English but all five of her daughters spoke English fluently before they went to school), and to slower learners. Add to that 3 and 4 year old's, what kind of teachers would be acquiring to help our children develop?

Or maybe along those lines of thinking we should give up our kids at 3 and 4 to get them back when they are adolescences and we don't even know them.

I don't believe it will improve anything. I had a professor that was a missionary in Africa. He informed us that education in some other countries isn't anything like the United States. Parents would steal to get their children educated, they would fight for the right to send their children to school. Children would learn according to their ability. The children want to go to school. Here is free, appreciated or not.

Although we, the United States, have this grand idea that we will educated all our children, that the teacher will teach everything, they will report all abuse, that the teachers will care for and nurture our children and all will be right the world.

How many teachers are there for just the money and nothing else? Plus all that time off. We have some fantasic teachers out there(and to those of you out we applaud you and thank you, but we do have those that slip between the cracks and are now emerging as pedifiles and abusers as well.

We're finding the same problems with some day care too. Why should you empower someone else, some stranger with your child, at an age where there so impressonable.

Kids are so stessed out now, gangs are in our schools, teachers aren't respected, there are shootings, violence in the halls. Are you willing to subject a 3 and 4 year old to that? As much as we would like to think this Utopia, it's not.

The pressure put on our children and young adults is unbelieveable. Granted that some people do well under pressure but most don't. We are not all scholars and are not ment to be.

We can't give our children up any earlier. Parents have the obligation, the duty of getting their children ready for kindgarten.

We, the parents not only should shape our children but when the time comes for them to go to school, work with the teachers, volunteer our time, monitor our schools and our children. In other words be accountable, not count on someone else to raise our children.

Learn more about this author, Paulette Redemske.
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