Scholars Propose Public Schooling for Babies to Fight Inequality

The source for the column, The Brookings Institution, is using this analysis of projects like the Carolina Abecedarian Project, which is criticized as showing no changes over the last four and a half years (out of five) that the project is run. In other words, the “improvements” by the study are an inadvertent selection bias where more motivated parents (more intelligent) tended to put their children in the project, and the results of the project, otherwise, are that graduates of fairly elite universities who were working with the children were about as effective as welfare mothers in teaching them.

More or less, what a careful look at the data tells us is that either the sample lagged in terms of native intelligence, or that all that they did did not succeed in overcoming the native disadvantage of being born without a father in the home—this is suggested by CAP’s strong correlation to the male gender. Both genders suffer from fatherlessness, but the effect is often far more obvious with boys.

So really, what Brookings demonstrates is the same thing that’s been demonstrated with “Head Start” for decades; it’s a great way of throwing money down the toilet for no effect. Moreover, Brookings defies logic when they are assuming that the same urban government schools which graduate kids at a sixth grade reading level in big cities like Chicago are somehow going to miraculously overcome their disfunctions when they’re changing more diapers. Good luck with that!

Awaiting a proposal to commence public education in utero.

Larry, we have at least one program for helping in utero—it’s called WIC. You also have TANF, Medicaid, and others attempting to do just that.

[Bert Perry]

Larry, we have at least one program for helping in utero—it’s called WIC. You also have TANF, Medicaid, and others attempting to do just that.

(warning; sonofadietician here)

Andrew, what’s outdated? WIC simply uses the MyPlate recommendations from the USDA, which are pretty much the latest and greatest, and also what the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics uses. So while I personally favor the Mayo Clinic Diet for several reasons (including that WIC cheese, formula, and butter), I’m thinking that the WIC/MyPlate guidelines are not as much “out of date” as they are politically driven to get votes from corn and dairy country.

Agreed 100% that we might do far more good by teaching WIC recipients (who are not necessarily poor) how to cook with diverse and often inexpensive ingredients, by the way. Part of that would probably include “why you want to marry the father/mother of your child and split cooking duties so you can actually do something interesting with those dried beans.”

It would be fun to watch the outcry over that last bit as many “advocates for the poor” (actually “people hurting the poor”) on the left tried to argue against half a century of sociological research and the Scriptures, too, and that’s a huge part of the problem with Brookings here. We know what works and what does not, and they’re trying to patch up what doesn’t work.

[Bert Perry]

(warning; sonofadietician here)

Andrew, what’s outdated? WIC simply uses the MyPlate recommendations from the USDA, which are pretty much the latest and greatest, and also what the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics uses. So while I personally favor the Mayo Clinic Diet for several reasons (including that WIC cheese, formula, and butter), I’m thinking that the WIC/MyPlate guidelines are not as much “out of date” as they are politically driven to get votes from corn and dairy country.

Agreed 100% that we might do far more good by teaching WIC recipients (who are not necessarily poor) how to cook with diverse and often inexpensive ingredients, by the way. Part of that would probably include “why you want to marry the father/mother of your child and split cooking duties so you can actually do something interesting with those dried beans.”

It would be fun to watch the outcry over that last bit as many “advocates for the poor” (actually “people hurting the poor”) on the left tried to argue against half a century of sociological research and the Scriptures, too, and that’s a huge part of the problem with Brookings here. We know what works and what does not, and they’re trying to patch up what doesn’t work.

You, me, and Julia Child are in agreement there. She outlived Nathan Pritikin by decades on that butter and those eggs. For that matter, Child is one author whose books should be on the shelves if we ever get around, as a society, to really helping the poor.