Government-Funded Daycare/All-Day K Promoters Lie When they Claim Nobel-Prize Economist Agrees with Them. Daycare and all-day kindergarten promoters including HELP and Charles Pascal & Fraser Mustard all say Nobel Prize Economist Dr James Heckman’s research supports their policy. This is NOT TRUE. Heckman rejects “universal” programs and favours vouchers for very targeted under-privileged families to use in programs run by religious and community groups of great diversity. He says it is not known what works best but that parents are key.
Read Heckman for yourself. He advocates vouchers for the underprivileged and not universal state-run early education. This is the 2009 interview by the Bernard Van Leer Foundation (broken link) that HELP quoted to show Heckman is in favour of all day Kindergarten/daycare. Read pages 24 to 29 and see what he really says.
Heckman Quotes:
- “None of this evidence supports universal preschool programs.”
- “Advocates and supporters of universal preschool often use existing research for purely political purposes.”
- “People are very worried about the central government inculcating values in their children that they don’t agree with.”
- He hopes “that early childhood provision doesn’t come to resemble a government bureaucracy,” which is exactly what the daycare promoters “integrated approach” is.
Sources of Heckman quotes:
- January 5, 2007. J. Heckman and D. Masterov. University of Chicago – research paper (PDF): “The Productivity Argument for Investing in Young Children” . See page 35
- June 2009. James Heckman. Bernard van Leer Foundation – transcipt pgs 24-29 (PDF): “An interview with James Heckman” (Extracted from “Family stress: Safeguarding young children’s care environment” (broken link))
See also this article on Heckman: More organizations & academics misrepresenting Dr Heckman on the economic benefits of daycare, all day kindergarten, preschool
kidsfirstcanada.org 