Being dead last has some people twitterpated. If you listen closely you can hear people crying from Hobbs to Farmington and from Animas to Clayton, “Oh, how can we ever go on?”
I am not one of the people concerned by the 2012 Kids Count Data Book. I looked at it closely and decided overall it is of dubious importance. There are things that New Mexico cannot change and there are things that are actually an attempt to change educational practice in New Mexico in ways that are harmful.
The four areas measured: Economic well-being, education, health, and, Family and Community. One big marker is children without health insurance. But by next year everyone in the nation will be covered, eh?
Certainly New Mexico has a problem with unemployment and is doing exactly the wrong things to increase employment of fragile workers. When workers cannot compete for jobs in job experience previously what workers have done is discount their price of employment to induce employers. But, the national and state minimum wage does not allow this.
So the employers rarely select low skill workers in New Mexico. What is the New Mexico government solution? Raise the minimum wage even higher making it that much harder for low-experience workers to get work experience. This is a problem caused by politicians who do not understand basic economics.
The real question from this report is: what do we in New Mexico want to do about measures of child success that we may not embrace. Specifically: early childhood education, rather, early government-run childhood education is the new national craze to increase teacher employment.
New Mexico, however, has not embraced this new fad to send babies to state run institutions, yet. Reportedly 62 percent of New Mexico children do not attend pre-school, which is one of the lowest rates in the nation. I am pleased by this and wish the other 38 percent would wise-up.
The notion is that if parents send their 36 month old baby to a government run facility, it will increase the chance that the child will graduate from college. Everyone likes the sound of that but I request them to show me the study of this effect. Show me the data. There is not any data. It is a hoax.
The world leaders in education do not institutionalize the education of their children until certain brain development stages are achieved. In Sweden and other Scandinavian countries, which lead the world in student achievement, their children start school at age seven.
Even though their children start four years after those American children who start in pre-school, their children quickly pass the American children in achievement and are ranked far above the American students who have, by attending government schools four extra years created wealth for teachers and administrators.
And there is the rub. Everyone but the students do well in the American system. Forty years ago voluntary half-day Kindergarten became mainstream in New Mexico. Then a decade ago it became mandatory all-day Kindergarten. And New Mexico schools have not thrived.
New Mexico full-day Kindergarten is a disaster. These are babies that are being treated as if they are widgets. Kindergarten, as conceived was good. Bring the children into the school for half of a day and let them get used to the culture. They should sing, play, do some rudimentary skills but mostly enjoy their time. When they go home each day they should exclaim, “I love school.”
No more. There are even so called “experts” trying to prepare kinder students for college subjects under the notion that if you paint the widget multiple times it will learn. Not so. These little bundles of protoplasm can only learn when their brains are ready to learn, as the Scandinavians know.
What New Mexico needs are more schools attending to the real development of the students and less schools being used to get more money for teacher employment.
Dr. Michael Swickard hosts the syndicated radio talk show News New Mexico on six to nine a.m. Monday - Friday on a number of New Mexico radio stations and through streaming. Email: michael@swickard.com
