Trump Frees Preschoolers From Health And Safety Burden
The Trump administration announced Monday that poor preschoolers will finally be released from the suffocating federal tyranny of adequate staffing, health screenings and rules discouraging physical and emotional abuse. The proposed Head Start overhaul would reduce 122 pages of national standards to roughly a dozen, transfer much of the responsibility to states and require English-only instruction, allowing disadvantaged four-year-olds to enter the same lightly supervised marketplace already enjoyed by airlines, chemical plants and cryptocurrency exchanges.
President Donald Trump praised the plan as an emancipation proclamation for children who have spent decades oppressed by dental exams and adults trained to notice developmental delays. “For years, tiny children have been crushed by regulations about teeth, eyesight, teachers and safety, and we’re giving them freedom, tremendous freedom, before kindergarten even starts,” Trump said. Under the current extremist system, Head Start programs must provide medical, dental and vision screenings, monitor children’s development and maintain enough qualified staff to keep classrooms safe. Those requirements have prevented children from learning a foundational American lesson: If nobody checks whether you can see the board, the market has determined that you do not need to.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will oversee the liberation of preschool classrooms from burdensome concepts such as “basic hygiene,” “sufficient supervision” and “identifying medical problems before they become emergencies.” States will receive greater flexibility to decide which protections remain necessary, ensuring that a child’s educational experience can reflect local values, budget negotiations and whether the legislature considers crayons a communist entitlement. English-only instruction will provide additional efficiency by ensuring that children who speak another language can begin their education with an immediate, age-appropriate lesson in administrative rejection.
Critics said the changes could leave Head Start as a hollow shell carrying a familiar name while offering fewer services to the families it was created to help. Administration officials rejected that assessment, noting that hollow shells are lighter, cheaper and easier to display at press conferences. The program will retain the name Head Start because “Head Start-Shaped Voucher for Whatever Your Governor Feels Like” performed poorly with parents. By removing the adults, screenings and safeguards that made the program useful, the administration has guaranteed every low-income child the freedom of having already succeeded.
* None of the quotes in this article were spoken by an actual person. More info.