Pre-K and Wes Moore

Universal pre-kindergarten education, aka “pre-K,” is finally coming of age. In the long term, it’s the single most effective—and by far the most cost effective—thing we could do to make America great.

The science is clear. The vast majority of a child’s brain development occurs in the first few years of life. That’s when drinking-from-a-fire-hose education occurs. Miss out on it, and a child will fall behind, intellectually, socially, and emotionally. He or she may stay behind for a lifetime.

That’s why some rich people play Bach to their yet-unborn kids in the womb. Studies show that prenatal kids can hear and remember music, and it may help develop parts of the brain that do math and higher reasoning.

If we gave every kid in America a brain-growing head start, we could massively increase the intelligence and mental health of our general population in a single generation. In the process, we could dent the systematic disadvantages of our poor and people of color and strike a generational blow for equality. What’s not to like?

We are the richest nation in the history of our planet. So why don’t we already have universal Pre-K? Why was it left out of President Biden’s trillion-dollar infrastructure bill? Aren’t our kids the most important “infrastructure” of all? Beats me.

It’s not as if it would break our budget. We already have a program to build the Northrop Grumman B-21 “Raider” stealth bomber. Its cost? Reportedly “$203 billion to develop, purchase and then operate 100 aircraft over 30 years.”

Let’s look at what the same amount, $203 billion, could do for our kids. According to our modern Oracle at Delphi (Google), 5.7% of our 2020 population of 331,449,281 were kids under 5. That’s 18.9 million kids. If we take only those three and older and assume an even age distribution, that’s 2/5 of the total, or 7.6 million kids. So $203 billion would amount to $26,000 per kid. If there are thirty kids per class, over thirty years, that would be $26,000 per class per year. Isn’t that pretty close to what a kindergarten teacher makes?

I know, I know: kindergarten teachers ought to earn a lot more. But that’s a story for another day. As for the B-21, I’m no kneejerk progressive who wants to kill every defense program. Putin and Xi—let alone Kim—are not getting more cuddly as they age.

So I think we need both strong defense and early-childhood education. But I would point out that our direct participation in a major war (at least for now) is speculative, while our need for smarter people to face future pandemics, global warming, multinational competition, and geopolitical crises is a certainty. We must learn to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Enter Wes Moore. In case you haven’t heard, he’ll be the new governor of Maryland. He just won his general election by a 30-point landslide. He’s Black and progressive.

All I know about him I learned by watching news clips after his victory. But that’s enough. What he said about Pre-K really knocked me off my feet. He’s determined to make two years of it available to every kid in Maryland. And—in his very next sentence—he said why. Eighty percent of brain development, he said, occurs in a kid’s first five years.

Think about that. Here was a pol trying to justify his plans. Yes, he actually has plans. And how does he promote them? Not with fear. Not with hate. Not with name calling. Not with blame. Just with data.

When I heard that, I wanted to jump through the TV screen and pump his hand, though I hadn’t even known his name before watching his speech. No jolting the amygdala for Wes Moore. No feeding us a steady diet of outrage and fear. Just pure reason and problem-solving.

It gets better. When Moore takes office as governor of Maryland, he will be part of a Democratic “trifecta.” Democrats will control the governor’s mansion and both houses of Maryland’s state legislature.

So Moore will have the power to implement his plans. Every kid who sees a third birthday during Moore’s administration will have some (but not all) of the advantages of those whose parents are not exhausted from trying to make ends meet and can read to them every night.

The trouble is, the people of Maryland—let alone the rest of us—won’t see the effects of this plan for most of a generation. Teachers will, as the kids they teach get smarter, more disciplined and more excited by learning. So will parents. But the bulge in the working population’s intelligence will take a long time to show up in Maryland’s GDP.

It’s a lot like global warming, but on the positive, not the negative, side. By the end of this century, maybe only two-thirds through, global warming could make large parts of our Earth uninhabitable. Our species could be dealing with unimaginable migration, wars, famine and devastation: the Four Horsemen of the Climate Apocalypse. No one seems to care much now, least of all the oligarchs who reap their riches from fossil fuels and the pols who pander to them.

But I’ll bet Wes Moore does. He’s a guy who, on the high of a heady victory, thought of children barely old enough to talk, and of their futures and ours. He’s a long-term thinker who actually credits science and makes it part of his plans.

I don’t know much more about Moore than I’ve outlined in this post. But no one wins a thirty-point landslide in this divisive age by being a panderer. If it were up to me, we’d all, left and right, be thinking about how to clone Wes Moore.


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