The Future is Local: Fisking Susan Rubio and Mandatory Kindergarten
Sorry not sorry, Susan
There’s an old jaded adage summarizing the broad mindset of any given authoritarian: if a thing is bad it must be forbidden, and if it is good it must be mandatory. If only all bad things can be made forbidden, and all good things made mandatory, everyone will be happy and live their best life and all will be well. As with all the narcissistic lies authoritarians tell themselves, though, any application of the idea always fails. No person, no matter how “educated,” “expert,” “experienced,” or “informed,” can ever know what makes every individual happy, what each individual considers the living of their best life, or how every individual defines all being well.
But pretending to know lies at the heart of authoritarianism, and leads to foolishness like California state Senator Susan Rubio being absolutely certain that what every kid really needs is kindergarten. Since kindergarten is part of my main title here on Substack, I feel compelled to weigh in with a simple “no, Susan, they don’t.” Nobody needs kindergarten.
From the 27 September 2022 Riverside Press-Enterprise, an exercise in authoritarian indulgence:
“Any teacher who has been in the classroom as long as I have can describe to you in detail the long-term, devastating effects to a child who misses kindergarten,” Rubio said Monday. “I plan to reintroduce my mandatory kindergarten bill and fight for the funding next year. Our children are too important. We can either pay the education costs now or the far greater societal costs later.”
McCarty had said to lawmakers that “full-day kindergarten gives students the time they need to engage in meaningful learning and play, resulting in greater school readiness, self confidence, and academic achievement compared to part-day programs. However, some school districts only offer part-day programs, leaving students without access to the benefits of full-day kindergarten.”
The mandatory kindergarten bill was sponsored by the Los Angeles Unified School District, the state’s largest and the second largest in the US. Kindergarten enrollment at the district for the 2020-21 academic year fell 14%, or about 6,000 students, according to a legislative analysis.
The analysis cited a California Department of Education report in April 2021 that K-12 public enrollment declined by 160,500 students statewide, including 61,000 in kindergarten. It said it was unclear whether those students enrolled in private kindergarten or attended any educational program.
The mandatory kindergarten bill was supported by teacher unions, school districts and early education groups. Its only formal opposition came from the California Homeschool Network, which called it “an unnecessary change.”
“Developmental differences vary greatly between children of this age range,” the homeschool network told lawmakers. “Some five-year-olds are ready, socially and cognitively, for first-grade work, and some six-year-olds can barely make it in kindergarten, so a mandatory system doesn’t really make sense for all of our children.”
Let me ask you something deceptively simple: would any kid really lose anything by virtue of not being required to attend kindergarten?
I want you to look very carefully at the last six words of the previous sentence, especially if you’re formulating the typical one-two knee-jerk authoritarian response, to wit:
If it’s not required nobody will go!
We can’t just have packs of five-year-olds cut loose to roam the streets!
Read those six words again, and read them as they are, not as you wish they were in order to fit whatever hidebound social order you want to impose on your neighbors. I have not said nobody should go to kindergarten. I say nothing is lost by leaving it optional.
Why does it matter to you if a kid goes to kindergarten or not? What is it you think it accomplishes? Before you answer that, let me go ahead and cut you off. It doesn’t matter what you think. They’re not your kids. You don’t get to choose for somebody else’s kids. You don’t get to choose anything for anybody else’s kids. If you think you do, I invite you to walk on over to your neighbor’s house and tell him so to his face. See what happens. You’ll deserve it.
Beyond that, though, let’s consider the staggering amount of assumptions and general wrongness in the big quotation above. It’s fisking time.
“Any teacher who has been in the classroom as long as I have can describe to you in detail the long-term, devastating effects to a child who misses kindergarten,” Rubio said Monday. “I plan to reintroduce my mandatory kindergarten bill and fight for the funding next year. Our children are too important. We can either pay the education costs now or the far greater societal costs later.”
What are these costs, Susan? How can they be quantified? How can they possibly include all the various factors involved across all the lives of all the kids, all the families, and indeed all the people, in all of society? Believing that can be calculated is totally insane, and any legislator who vows to “fight for the funding” of something insane needs to be driven from office.
And who are “our children,” anyway? Sounds like an extension of the “we” trap to me. You do for your kids, Susan. Everybody else will do for theirs. It’ll be fine.
McCarty had said to lawmakers that “full-day kindergarten gives students the time they need to engage in meaningful learning and play, resulting in greater school readiness, self confidence, and academic achievement compared to part-day programs. However, some school districts only offer part-day programs, leaving students without access to the benefits of full-day kindergarten.”
School readiness, self confidence, and academic achievement? Really? You mean like this?
Even the people who attempt to measure the ultimately unmeasurable outcomes of public education concede that nothing helps. Spending increases, and outcomes get worse. Johnny can’t read, man. And Johnny probably went to kindergarten.
The mandatory kindergarten bill was sponsored by the Los Angeles Unified School District, the state’s largest and the second largest in the US. Kindergarten enrollment at the district for the 2020-21 academic year fell 14%, or about 6,000 students, according to a legislative analysis.
The analysis cited a California Department of Education report in April 2021 that K-12 public enrollment declined by 160,500 students statewide, including 61,000 in kindergarten. It said it was unclear whether those students enrolled in private kindergarten or attended any educational program.
Or did he? How do we really know if Johnny went to kindergarten or not? Apparently nobody knows. 61,000 kindergarten students have apparently dropped off the rolls. Where are they at? It’s “unclear.” Nobody knows where the kids went or why they went there. It’s possible they don’t even exist, like California has simply experienced a population loss of 61,000 five-year-olds. That’s not impossible. California’s demographics are awfully weird, and getting weirder. Given all that uncertainty, exactly how will mandatory kindergarten help anybody? Will it magically make these kids reappear? How?
An even more subversive question: why should it make these kids reappear? If you’re a parent, it’s laughably easy to get your kid into school. A few minutes of websearching will turn up a phone number to the local school district office. If you call it and ask “how do I get my kid into school?” the bureaucracy will take it from there. The effort required to get your kid into school is as minimal as it gets without being zero. Even if we stipulate that these kids exist in the first place, the fact that these kids aren’t in school means their parents don’t want to send them there. Rubio wants to force them back. Against their will. If they even exist in the first place.
Rubio has no idea where the kids are, and can’t point to any sound data indicating kindergarten will help them. At the bottom line, then, what is Rubio even thinking? Well …
The mandatory kindergarten bill was supported by teacher unions, school districts and early education groups. Its only formal opposition came from the California Homeschool Network, which called it “an unnecessary change.”
The supporters of this bill are the groups who stand to profit from its implementation? Groups who undoubtedly donate to Rubio’s campaign? This is my shocked face.
“Developmental differences vary greatly between children of this age range,” the homeschool network told lawmakers. “Some five-year-olds are ready, socially and cognitively, for first-grade work, and some six-year-olds can barely make it in kindergarten, so a mandatory system doesn’t really make sense for all of our children.”
Indeed. Kindergarten may be good for some kids. But it may be bad for others, and I suspect it’s largely pointless for most. But what I think doesn’t matter. They’re not my kids. They’re not Susan Rubio’s either. Families get to choose for themselves, and they’re plenty capable. Robbing them of that choice is an exercise in the rankest authoritarianism driven by the profoundest narcissism.
If a thing is bad, leave it be. People will realize it’s bad and avoid it. If a thing is good, leave it be. People will realize it’s good and pursue it. That process looks messy to the authoritarian eye, but creativity always does.
If you are a concerned parent reading this, I offer you two things: reassurance and warning. Let me reassure you that you are plenty capable of making education decisions for your children. The future is local, and you must embrace that localness and see to the needs of your family locally. You almost certainly have a local network you can tap for help: a church, your work, or even just your literal neighbors. You can take care of your family yourself. Be warned, however, that tyrants like Susan Rubio exist. They think they know better than you how to live your life, and think they know better than you how to raise your kids. Susan and the tyrants like her want to sell you a crazy bill of goods, promising they “care” while imposing their demented vision on you by force, “for your own good.” Be mindful of this, and see it for what it is, and fight like hell to keep it from your door. This won’t be easy, but it will be worth it. After all, it’s for your kids.