I guess I’m lucky. We found a preschool that is excellent (in my opinion).
It isn’t “heady” but allows children to “learn” simply through play.
Gosh…who would have known that a clump of Play-doh helps with spacial development, fine motor muscles, creativity, and the like. Yes. we have it at home too. They are not hammered with ABCs, but everything there is designed to give them an embedded foundation for learning when they are ready. It might be why I was able to teach each of them to read the summer before entering Kindergarten (summer babies…just had turned 5). They weren’t already burned out!

I’m with elkabrikir. Mine go two mornings a week so that I can get my own spiritual formation and a Bible study. I don’t like how pricey it is. But I am pretty sure I would NOT be happy with the quality if it was state-run and $10 a day. Sometimes you get what you pay for.

Catholic education in Canada is a guaranteed treaty right granted to catholics by the very un-catholic friendly british to those inhabiting New France, after its conquest– to preserve public order (seeing how badly stamping out catholicism worked in Ireland). The only moneys added recently were to fully fund catholic education to the end of highschool– it used to stop at grade 9, a funding decision reflecting how few people used to continue past that level. As catholic missions spread throughout Canada, these rights were extended to all catholics in British North America.

Attitudes to homeschooling vary from province to province. Quebec feels the need to convert non-quebecois children into quebecois, and homeschooling interferes with that.

Anyway, a junior high school aquaintance of mine sent my a fund raising letter to promote the Imagination Library in our own town. This program was designed to provide children under five with their own set of age appropriate books. It was started by a noted celebrity for her own hometown in Tenn, which may or may not be financial distressed–I simply down’t know. Sounds harmless enough, right? Heck, sounds like a good idea to me: Turn off Barney; read Hop on Pop instead!

Well, in our town, the local education services people have gotten ahold of the program, and want to give books to all kids under the age of 6 who live in our county. Some of the money spent is private; a lot of tax payer funded. Now, I assure you, while there are a great deal of children in the county who are in financially distressed families, huge numbers of city kids (and a lot of the county kids too) are quite well off. There is no need to enroll ALL 6 years old in the program. Mom and Dad could go down to the local book store and buy books themselves. And we have an excellent public library, open 7 days a week during the school year, M-Sat during the summer.

My point: bit by bit, we are relieving parents of their single most important job: raising their own kids. Everything from school lunches, to extended school days, after school programs, “free” in home wellness checks by social workers. And now books for the little guys.

And then of course, parents are slammed for doing a poor job of parenting. Pareting in a learned behavior and takes practice. And you can’t work on your parenting if your kids are never around, (and “professionals” are doing it all for you anyway.) It is little wonder more and more parents are doing a poor job, and more and more young adults are deciding not to do it at all.

(Incidentally, there still are traditional preschool schools out there: lots of play time and fun. My 5 year old attends one. But the pressures to “get with program” are tremendous, and I fear for our great preschool program’s future.)

Satan is a very sneaky devil! He even infiltrated preschool programs. When I was raising my first subset of children, preschool was a simple nursery school. Around around 1994 nursery school began to disappear. Rigorous academic standards were being imposed on 3 year olds. I could no longer send my 3 year old two days a week (so that I could attend Bible study one day and run errands the other). No! It was a 4-5 day school week. The funniest scene I remember, is a teacher (basically) pounding the table saying, “You must learn your ABCs!!” as 14 three year old boys and one lone girl stared at her with solemn faces.

Then the fees increased. “What’s going on!” I wondered. “Ah! The inflow of federal dollars.” Yep! Working parents could get a CREDIT for preschool since for THEM it was daycare, whereas, I just needed 6 childfree hours a week to regroup. Now, I had to absorb the opportunity cost of NOT working and the increased fees, plus funnel my tax dollars to
Working Wanda in the form of a money transfer/credit.

I was run out of the system. I couldn’t afford the fees. I didn’t want “Princeton Preschool”. I eschewed daycare.

GOD WORKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS! Raising my children has been MY salvation. What parents don’t realize is that parenting is a gift to moms and dads to help US grow up. My children have enriched me more than they will ever know. Every spiritual gift I have received has been wrapped in pink, downy baby flesh.

Parenting numerous children over several decades works miracles in the souls of parents. Joy and Peace flourish year-round. Priceless, and bought with the price of Christian parenting, they are worth more than any tax credit.