Questions and Answers regarding the Nanny State System
(Early Learning Curriculum, Tests, and Early Care Rating
System)
April 25, 2005
1. Early learning standards and the child care rating system are
voluntary. Why do you object to a voluntary system?
State-adopted early learning curriculum ("standards")
are not voluntary, because they create the official norm for what
children from birth through 5 should believe, how they should interact,
and the worldview they should adopt. This is not the role of
government. Official early learning curriculum establishes
government-approved social and emotional norms by which all children and
families in the state will be evaluated. This is extraordinarily
dangerous, because government holds the power of enforcement as no other
entity does.
Once adopted, official norms for babies and toddlers are no longer
voluntary. All of the following will be based upon them:
- Certification of teachers;
- Testing of all children (screening) at least once by age
three;
- Classification and labeling of all children as normal or
abnormal and storing that classification in the child's permanent record;
- Training of parents in the "right" way to parent;
- Evaluations of parents during home visits by the state and storing
that evaluation in the family's permanent record;
- "Promoting" child care centers and early learning programs as
"qualified" if they comply;
- State referrals for child care centers and early learning programs
that are rated qualified;
- Establishing into state law a specific, radical national organization
as the single certifying agent (National Association of the Education of
Young Children -- NAEYC) for teachers, child care centers, and early
learning programs.
2. What do "social and emotional standards"
mean?
Social and emotional standards are a set of attitudes and beliefs
that form the worldview of our children. They include, but are not
limited to the following:
- a child's interest in working in groups, rather than independently;
- a child's attitudes toward personal gender identity;
- acceptance of homosexuality as equally normal as heterosexuality;
- attitudes toward the environment;
- attitudes toward jobs, workers, and careers;
- involvement in social activism.
3. Why do you call this curriculum a political agenda for our
kids?
This is a political agenda because it would effectively impose a
particular set of attitudes and beliefs on our children by force of the
state. All of the curriculum is consistent with the a worldview of
diversity training, group consciousness, consensus morality,
environmentalism, oppressor/oppressed mentality, and homosexual
indoctrination. They reflect a worldview that is hostile to the religious
and political beliefs of most families today. For the most part, however,
parents are unaware of the content of this curriculum.
The early learning curriculum is being pushed in every state, driven, in
part, by the political priorities of the National Governor's Association,
a keenly political organization. The early learning curriculum is
included in pending federal legislation that would define federal
baby and toddler norms. Federal legislation dating back to 1994 promotes
a federal role over every pre-school child in the land (Goal 1 or Goals
2000).
4. Ready4K states that this system supports parents in their role
as their child's most important teacher by educating them about early
child care. They say that that this system honors parents and that
parents are supreme, that the system is intended to just get information
out about what normal development is. Why do you say that the system
usurps parental authority and the personal privacy of families?
The language that Ready4K and government agencies use to sell
this system to parents is deceptive and misleading. It denies the
obvious. Suppose an agent from the state or from Ready4K knocks at your
door, introduces herself with a friendly smile, and tells you she is
bringing you information on child development and how to be a better
parent.
She describes the values your children should be adopting: that group
identity and accomplishment is valued while individual responsibility and
achievement is not; how your children should relate to the water, the
trees, and the earth around them; that your children should understand
that boys and girls are not innately different from each other; that your
children should know and understand that the family of mom, dad, and kids
is an arbitrary choice and that any other arrangement is at least as
valuable; and that your children's careers define their value in life.
She tells you that since you are the parent, you will be the one to
decide how you can best teach these values. Ready4K won't interfere with
how you want to accomplish the job. After all, parents are supreme.
Next she informs you that your children will be tested on these values
and ideas at least by the age of three, and that the state will give each
of your children an individual data tracking number and keep a permanent
record of how they score and how they are labeled. Federal agencies and
other government services will have access to that information. If your
local child-care center down the block or your church preschool program
wants to be publicly labeled as a quality care center, they will have
to demonstrate that it teaches these ideas, too, and its workers will
need to be trained by an outside accrediting agency that also incorporate
these ideas into their programs.
Since the state has decided what values and attitudes you should be
teaching your children, since it is testing them for these values, and
since it is choosing certifying organizations that promote these values
and that qualify early care centers based on these values, are parents
really supreme? Or has the state usurped the authority of parents to
raise up their children in the way they should go? We believe that the
state is massively overstepping its authority into arenas it does not
belong. All of this will also
come with a hefty price tag for new and expansive government.
http://EdAction.org
http://www.EdWatch.org
952-361-4931