Keeping Head Start Bigotry Free

May 21, 2005

Guest Post by Morbo

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Head Start, probably because I’m an alumnus of the program.

I was probably one of the first kids in America to go through Head Start in the late 1960s. To be honest, I don’t remember much about it, but I’ve always admired the program’s goal of helping disadvantaged kids get a leg up.

That’s why I get mad when I see right-wingers claiming to support Head Start while really working to tear it down.

Head Start is so popular that only the real nut faction on the right attacks it openly. The others offer proposals to “help” Head Start that would do just the opposite.

A case in point is Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio). The House of Representatives is debating a Head Start reauthorization bill. There is rare bipartisan agreement, and the measure is moving forward.

Boehner is determined to gum up the works by adding a dangerous “faith-based” component to the bill when it reaches the full House floor. Boehner’s rider would guarantee Head Start providers the right to discriminate on religious grounds when hiring staff.

The proposal is completely unnecessary. It doesn’t even make sense. Head Start is sometimes located in church basements, but it’s not a religious program. It can’t be. Head Start has a strong public education component and by law must serve children of all religious backgrounds. Why would a program that by law must be secular need to discriminate on the basis of religion when hiring staff?

There should be one test only for Head Start staff: Are they qualified to teach the children? Beyond that, it should not matter if the staffers are Christian, Jewish, atheists or Zoroastrians. The inquiry should not even be made.

The reauthorization bill requires Head Start teachers to have college degrees. That’s good. But why confuse the issue by allowing religious bigotry? That’s not going to help Head Start.

Lawsuits aren’t going to help Head Start either, yet I suspect that’s what local councils will get when they start hiring and firing people on the basis of religion in a publicly funded program.

Boehner says he wants to help Head Start, but his actions indicate otherwise. My guess is, like a lot of those on the right, he doesn’t really like the program but won’t say that publicly, fearing voter backlash. His amendment is a poison pill that has the potential to cripple a cornerstone of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.

It’s probably too much to hope that the House will reject it, but here’s hoping the Senate has better sense.

I realize Head Start has been a popular Democratic initiative for a long time, but from what I’ve read, it’s not a very successful program. By the third grade, kids of the same socio-economic background who didn’t have Head Start are at the same level academically as those who did. The long-term results, I believe, are greater self-satisfaction with how one is doing in school, fewer absentees, and a lower dropout rate. Which just doesn’t seem like enough, to me. You’ve heard the theory of education that has we’re all just being brainwashed into being perfect factory workers who show up on time, learn how to be content doing endlessly repetitive tasks, and jump to the sound of a bell? The results that are achieved by this program strike me as ominously simply reinforcing this program, by beginning it earlier.

I wish Democrats, instead of contenting themselves in the early childhood area with this intitiative from over 40 years ago, which has not met their goals,would focus more on public daycare, like most other civilized countries have, which would provide more parents with the equal opportunity to work and change the socio-economic level of their children.

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