Mom Sues Nursery School

Here’s a story that should shock and disgust but that strikes me as being perfectly in line with where education in this country has been headed for at least the past 30-40 years: A mother of a four-year-old in New York City is suing her daughter’s preschool because she does not feel the school is adequately preparing the four-year-old for admission into an Ivy League college. More immediately, the lawsuit claims that in three weeks of attending the $19,000-a-year preschool, her daughter was not being prepared to take “an exam required for admission into nearly all the elite private elementary schools” in NYC. Rather, the preschool dumped the four-year-old in with groups of younger children (immature two- and three-year-olds) and, according to the lawsuit, “still teaching the plaintiff’s daughter about shapes and colors,” rather than prep tests for elite elementary schools. And importantly, for the child’s future education, the suit continues, "getting a child into the Ivy League starts in nursery school." I guess that explains why I couldn’t get into Harvard (beyond my not applying). I never even attended nursery school, let alone one that prepared me for the tests required to get into the elite private elementary schools that apparently are the initial sine qua non (I do know some Latin) on the yellow brick road to an Ivy League education and ultimate financial success. As the suit notes (without citation): "Studies have shown entry into a good nursery school guarantees more income than entry into an average school."

I probably don’t need to state the point of this sad story, but I will anyway: When the primary (or sole) purpose of education – nursery school through graduate school, cradle to grave – is career or financial success, and that that linear connection can be bought and assumed, then we should just scrap the whole education system and simply pay businesses and corporations directly to train (apprentice-like) our children more efficiently for whatever niches should need to be filled at any given time. (There’s also a point about the purpose of schools – nursery schools?! –being test preparation, but I’ll save that for another rant. And then there’s the point about $19,000/year preschools . . . and parents living vicariously through their children . . . and frivolous lawsuits . . . So many points, so little time.)