It seems that some at the state legislature insist on playing games with Tennessee’s voluntary Pre-K program. Word is, they’ll be introducing a budget alternative that shifts $22 million in Pre-K funding to “non-recurring” dollars. Here’s what this means: After the 2009-2010 budget, that funding would go away. That’s right, funding for 220 classrooms serving nearly 4500 4-year-olds would simply expire.

Make no mistake this action is a first step in ending state funding for Pre-K.

Sure, it is June and the legislature is still in session as the days get longer and hotter. But that’s no reason to play games with Pre-K.

And yes, the budget this year is difficult and tough decisions must be made. But that’s not an excuse for telling 4,500 families that they may no longer have access to the high quality early education provided by Pre-K.

There is most definitely a campaign for governor starting. But that does not mean we should adopt irresponsible cuts to the state budget.

Here’s what makes sense: approve Governor Bredesen’s budget proposal. His plan maintains funding for Pre-K and K-12 education. It does not pass on the expense of Pre-K to local governments, as the alternative plan would. Instead, Governor Bredesen wisely proposes maintaining funding for a program that is proven. Pre-K works. We know that kids who have a quality Pre-K experience start school ready to learn, are more likely to read at grade level, and are more likely to graduate from high school.

Tell your legislators not to play games with Pre-K. Tell them to fully fund Governor Bredesen’s budget.

Andy Spears
Andy Spears is the Director of Policy and Outreach at Stand for Children, a grassroots organization dedicated to improving children’s lives by improving public schools. He holds a Ph.D. in public policy from Tennessee State University.

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I agree with Mr. Spears. Let's quit playing games with public money and the education of our children. Kind of reminds me of an old country and western song, Send Me the Money You Worked So Hard For. No, that isn't correct. The was Jeannie Seely and something about the pillow you lie on. The former is about right though.

Yeah, I know. I'm reading between the lines of Mr. Spears' writing above. However, if we're truly concerned about our children, why don't we focus on programs that really help our children rather than turning them over to strangers (teachers) at such a young and tender age when they should be learning from their parents.

Mommy, daddy, family are the first teachers our children should be experiencing. But instead, "it's for the children" is again the battle cry in the grab for more and more of our tax dollars ... tax dollar funded programs that do nothing more than waste our hard earned buckaroos.

The first movies I remember watching are The Thing and Ulysses in an outdoor theater on Guam. It was oh so cool when Ulysses, or Odysseus as those Greek guys called him, and his men poked out the Cyclops' eye with that tree trunk.

Then the first books I remember my mother taking my sister and me to the library to get, then read to us, were Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and From The Earth to The Moon. Whoa-ho baby. It was off to the races then. All I wanted to do was go to school to learn how to read. Then I could read the books those movies were based upon, like The Iliad and The Odyssey.

The movie was a disappointment, though. The movie took place in the middle eastern desert while the locale in the book was at the headwaters of the Nile, but Ursula Andress more than made up for the inconsistencies between the two.

"Look Jane, look look. See Spot run." That's how we geezers learned to read. Many of us went on to become "speed readers." I read the Dune Trilogy in about a week, but I also used to get a little bored stuck in the middle of a swamp in eastern North Carolina. Technical manuals have since ruined reading for enjoyment, but maybe one day ...

"Education" has become more like a pleasure boat or a private airplane ... a hole into which we pour money. We pay more and more with less and less return on our investment.

But it's "for the children" don't you know, so that makes every wasted nickel worth while.

What do our children read today? Do they read Kipling, Haggard, Longfellow, that Bard of Avon dude, Homer, Huxley, Poe, Conan Doyle, Burroughs, Plato, Mark Twain, Marcus Aurelius, Hemingway, O. Henry, or Pascal? If we ask any high school senior who Jean-Paul Sartre was, would we get anything more than a blank stare? Try to find a set of Lincoln Logs in a kindergarten class. Then Legos, the kind that used to come in a big bucket.

How many students could read Harry Harrison's Bill The Galactic Hero, the dude with two right arms, and understand that it's a satire of Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers? How many could tell us the difference between the written and Hollywoodized versions of She. Well, there is only one word to describe her - beaudacious.

Look at science fair projects. I'll never forget watching Mr. Wizard, in black and white, when a kid came on who had taken one of our earthly plants, an African Violet if memory serves correctly, put it in a sealed flask, and over a period of months gradually changed its atmosphere to that of Mars. Now that was one weird looking plant. How many kids today would attack a project like that one?

And the "it's for the children" gang still wants more money.

No. I propose that we go back to the old tried and true methods that worked for so many decades. I would further suggest that those who would continue to foist these so-called modern teaching methods and systems on our children go home and get a real job. Get a real job where they actually produce something besides dead trees, dead trees used to produce manuscripts and books that our children cannot read anyway under the present circumstances, and hot air. Then maybe we can get down to the business of actually educating our children. If they'd quit killing trees there would be more for the little birdies to perch in as well as more to suck up that noxious greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.

We don't need more money. We don't need to send our children to school at ever earlier ages on the pretext that they need to be socialized or be given a head start on their educations. The dudes and dudettes who designed the space shuttle and the international space station learned how to read Dick and Jane by sounding out the words. Why can they do it but our children today cannot?

Oh boy. It's going to be one of those days already. I can feel it in my bones. Raspberries, I wonder if I can find some raspberries ... and a smoke.

Royce E. Burrage, Jr.
Royce@OfficiallyChapped.org