Universal pre-school is the coming fad. High-cost, high-quality pre-schools help poor children do better in school and in life. But when it comes to subsidized pre-schools for all children, the record of success is murkier, reports the Boston Globe.

For example, a recent study of Oklahoma’s statewide program to provide preschool for 4-year-olds found large benefits for children poor enough to qualify for a subsidized or free school lunch, and almost none for children who could afford to pay full price.

Hispanic children boosted their test scores by 54 percent in one year, probably because they learned English. Black children improved by 17 percent. There was no detectable difference for white children.

The problem with the research, said David Blau, a professor of economics at the University of North Carolina and author of “The Child Care Problem,” is that it focuses on very high-cost, high-quality programs unlikely to be duplicated in a broad public system. “What we don’t know,” he said, “is whether, if you scale it down, you get proportionally smaller but similar kinds of benefits. If you cut the costs in half, do you get half the benefits? Or is there some threshold before you get benefits?”

Blau is right on target. Head Start and state-funded pre-schools for the poor rarely provide a high-quality program; it costs too much, even for a small group. “Universal” pre-school inevitably would be the sort of program that duplicates what happens in middle-class homes and isn’t intensive enough to help truly disadvantaged children.

Talking is “the anti-drug,” says a new study. But warnings about drugs and alcohol won’t have any effect unless parents have a long history of talking to their children, and listening to their mundane problems.

Teenagers who thought their parent wasn’t listening, or taking his or her concerns seriously, were far more likely to turn to dangerous substances. The parental plea that they not do so was not taken seriously by the teen.

“I think what happens is if the parents show the teenagers that when an issue comes up, it’s OK to withdraw and not really talk about it, teenagers pick up on that and they see that as a legitimate way to deal with an issue,” (University of Illinois Professor John Caughlin says. “They will turn around and do the same thing to the parents.”

Ignore your kids, and they’ll ignore you.

I also suggest teaching kids to think about the consequences of their actions when they’re toddlers.

On the New York Times op-ed page, teacher Marlene Heath eloquently defends Chicago’s policy of holding back students who can’t read. Heath, now a reading specialist at an all-poverty school on the South Side, was skeptical when Mayor Richard Daley ended social promotion in 1995. Now she says it’s been a boon to students and teachers.

Only 26 percent of our elementary students were able to meet national norms on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills in reading in 1995. That number is now 41 percent. At Beethoven (School) alone, reading comprehension jumped to 46 percent last year from 22 percent in 1997.

About 48 percent of Chicago public school students tested in the lowest quarter nationally before social promotion ended. Now that number is half of what it was. The high school drop-out rate, which was nearly 17 percent in 1995, is now at 13 percent, while the graduation rate has steadily climbed.

But the students who have come through my classrooms over the last 14 years offer the most convincing evidence that retention is one of the best things we can do for a child who needs that extra year to develop literacy skills. I began teaching sixth graders in 1992, and shortly after social promotion ended, I began to see students who were much better prepared. This new caliber of students allowed me to do what I should have been able to do all along Ñ teach sixth-grade-level work to all my students. That hadn’t been possible with the two or three nonreaders who had passed each year through my class before.

Students who can’t read fluently become deeply frustrated. Not only do they drop out, they can ruin the learning environment for other students.

University of North Carolina-Wilmington Professor Mike Adams made a colleague “uncomfortable” by discussing his columns. He was told not to discuss his writing in the office in front of those who might be offended by his opinions.

Now he’s writing a list of all the ways his colleagues have made him uncomfortable over the years.

*My first year at UNCW, a faculty member in our department objected to a job candidate because he was “a little too white male.” Such comments make me feel really uncomfortable, being a white guy and all that.

*My second year at UNCW we removed a white woman from our interview pool in order to make room for a black woman. When the university forced me to discriminate on the basis of race, I felt really uncomfortable.

*My third year at UNCW someone suggested that we should reject a job candidate because he was “too religious.” It sure makes me feel uncomfortable when people say things like that.

*My fourth year at UNCW someone objected to a job candidate because she felt that the husband played too dominant a role in the candidate’s marriage. It also makes me feel uncomfortable when people say things like that.

*Then there are all the times that the name Jesus Christ has been used as a form of profanity in the office. That makes me feel uncomfortable. By the way, I am especially offended by the phrase “Jesus F***ing Christ!” I mean, no one ever says “Mo-F***ing-Hammed!” or “F***ing Buddha!,” do they?

*Then there was the time that a gay activist in our department suggested that I switch to bi-sexuality in order to double my chances of finding a suitable “partner.” That made me feel uncomfortable and she knew it. After I started to blush, she asked, “Whatís the matter, are you a little homophobic?” . . .

*And how about the time that a faculty member called another faculty member a “mother f***er” in one of our meetings? That was before he said that he should have climbed over the desk and “slapped the s*** out” of him. These sociologists need to start getting along with one another if they plan to build a Utopian society. Plus, it makes me feel really uncomfortable to hear about these threats of violence in the workplace.

Since his columns can’t be discussed at work, Adams has offered to meet critics for coffee outside the university, where free speech is protected.

No education qualifications are required to enlist in the British Army. Which is why so many recruits can’t read and write very well. The Telegraph reports:

A confidential study into the educational standards of soldiers has revealed that half of all new infantry recruits only have the reading and writing skills of 11-year-olds.

The study commissioned by the Ministry of Defence, which the Telegraph has seen, also discloses that a fifth of recruits have the literacy and numeracy levels of seven-year-olds. Four per cent are at the standard of the average five-year-old.

. . . Within the next 10 years, the Army will be issued with equipment that will require all frontline soldiers to be computer literate and numerically literate if they are to fight and survive on the battlefield. They will also need to be able to read and understand ever-more complicated training manuals.

Smart weapons require smart soldiers.

I’ve just added Googlesense ads in the right-hand column. If you click on an ad, I make a very small amount of money. So click away!

Recently, I got a check for $5 from a bank I’d never heard of. I had no idea why they were sending me this money, but I deposited it. Then I received another check for $0.22 from the same mystery bank. Apparently, it’s a refund for something I’ve never heard of that appeared on a credit card bill. What bill? I don’t know. But I’m going to deposit it, along with a somewhat larger check that came in. You know what they say: 22 cents here, 22 cents there. It adds up. To 44 cents.

The spam filter also is updated, so I’m hoping that will block the drug and mortgage ads that have been spamming old comments. If anyone spots spam, please let me know.

Learning to dance teaches fourth- and fifth-grade children how to learn other things, writes George Will, after a visit to a Los Angeles school.

(Teacher Ethel) Bojorquez, whose experience has immunized her against educational fads, admiringly watches her pupils perform under (dancer Carole) Valleskey’s exacting tutelage and exclaims, “They are learning about reading right now.”

They are, she marvels, learning about — experiencing, actually — “sequencing, patterns, inferences.” She explains: “You don’t only listen to language, you do it.”

. . . Bojorquez’s raven-haired students, their dark eyes riveted on Valleskey, mimic her motions. These beautiful children have a beautiful hunger for the satisfaction of structured, collaborative achievement.

That begins when Valleskey, a one-woman swarm, bounces into the room and immediately, without a word of command, reduces the turbulent students to silent, rapt attention. They concentrate to emulate Valleskey’s complex syncopation of claps, finger snaps and thigh-slaps by which she sets the tone of the coming hour: This will be fun because things will be done precisely right.

Will is right: Children crave excellence.

Douglas Bass, a computer science professor in Minnesota, has started a higher education blog called Academistics, which will focus on academic freedom. Check it out.

Magister Mundi sum!
“I am the Master of the Universe!”
You are full of yourself, but you’re so cool you
probably deserve to be. Rock on.

Which Weird Latin Phrase Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla.

Via Uncle Sam’s Cabin (“May barbarians invade your personal space!”).

Alarmed by rising anti-semitism, France’s education minister, Luc Ferry, has issued a guide for “civil education” classes urging teachers to show Holocaust movies such as Schindler’s List, Sophie’s Choice and The Pianist. The Telegraph reports:

The guide also recommends visits to former Nazi concentration camps, books such as The Diary of Anne Frank and documentaries depicting the Holocaust.

. . . Mr Ferry said teachers had reported being abused by young Muslims while trying to teach about the Holocaust. He described how one teacher asked a class of 13-year-old pupils about their likes and dislikes. One child wrote: “I like football, I don’t like Jews.”

One prominent rabbi has advised Jewish schoolchildren in Paris who received abuse and threats from Muslim youths to wear baseball hats to cover their skullcaps.

Mr Ferry said that young people used racist insults such as “dirty Jew” or “dirty wog” as frequently as other people said “idiot” or “fool”.

He added: “It’s extremely serious. These words have become banal, light as feathers, when in fact they have a very serious history. The sole purpose of this guide is to give weight back to these words; to make pupils understand that these insults have killed.”

. . . The guide also includes details of the laws that teachers can refer to when confronted with racist acts. “It is necessary to intervene in the slightest incident – even a verbal attack – and not let any of these things pass without punishment or explanation,” said Mr Ferry.

There’s been a 10-fold increase in attacks on Jews in the last 10 years.