False Start for Head Start in Michigan

My school district, in rural Michigan, has received a federal largesse of $60,000 for the “Head Start” program. “Head Start” is one segment of the “War on Poverty” fairly popular with Congress, because the money is poured into nearly every school district in the land; nobody dislikes children; and all federal money is free, you know. What about results? Well—the teachers are paid much more gratifyingly than in the regular school program; and if the program accomplishes nothing, after a few years it can be quietly forgotten, and some substitute commenced. Such is the Great Society.

“Head Start” theoretically is meant to bring out the latent talents of very young “culturally disadvantaged” people, by special attention to them. Here and there, something of the sort may be accomplished — though the notion that somehow a little extra schooling may compensate for stupid parents, disintegrated environment, and every other “disadvantage” is bound up with the pseudo-religion of education ism, which Dr. Ernest van den Haag calls a variant of the Pelagian heresy.

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Russell Kirk

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My school district, in rural Michigan, has received a federal largesse of $60,000 for the “Head Start” program. “Head Start” is one segment of the “War on Poverty” fairly popular with Congress, because the money is poured into nearly every school district in the land; nobody dislikes children; and all federal money is free, you know. What about results? Well—the teachers are paid much more gratifyingly than in the regular school program; and if the program accomplishes nothing, after a few years it can be quietly forgotten, and some substitute commenced. Such is the Great Society.

“Head Start” theoretically is meant to bring out the latent talents of very young “culturally disadvantaged” people, by special attention to them. Here and there, something of the sort may be accomplished — though the notion that somehow a little extra schooling may compensate for stupid parents, disintegrated environment, and every other “disadvantage” is bound up with the pseudo-religion of education ism, which Dr. Ernest van den Haag calls a variant of the Pelagian heresy.