Monday, March 3, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
Once again, Democrat/teacher/assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani has proposed heavy-handed legislation that would require parents to subject their toddlers to our failing public school systems a year earlier. Chris G's iron-fisted proposal to force all kids into kindergarten -- regardless of a parent's wishes -- and extend the half-day kindergarten experience into a full day, is nothing short of a ploy to hire ore dues-paying union members for the Nevada Education Association.
Mandated kindergarten is a solution in search of a problem. First, 98 percent of kindergarten-age kids already attend kindergarten. Even persons subjected to public education will recognize this as an extremely high figure. Secondly, it's a parent's right and responsibility to decide whether or not their child goes to kindergarten -- not Hillary Clinton's village or Chris Giunchigliani or the teachers union.
Lastly, we should be very afraid of the assemblywoman's scheme to "reform" kindergarten in order to make it more "developmentally based." That's education -- speak for "screw it up" -- such as the failed "reforms" known as whole language, and its sibling, the new, new, new, new-math.
Kindergarten should serve as a bridge for toddler to go from home to the school environment -- and a half-day of cutting, pasting, coloring and making jello is more than sufficient.
Charles A. Muth
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