THREAD: When researching my book, it was interesting to explore the different philosophies underlying why we have a publicly-funded K-12 education system, but not so for our 0-5 child care system. The current pandemic has revealed what a lie those differences are. (1/n)

Common schooling, when it arose in the mid-1800s, had several rationales: educating a citizenry to safeguard democracy; a workforce for business; and a safe place for the influx of immigrant & citydwelling children to go (prior, most Americans lived on multigenerational farms) /

It’s always been hard to pick apart which of those was the most important. It’s clear now that today, the *biggest* driver is having somewhere for kids to go while parents work. Even semantically, the conversion of “schools” to emergency “child cares” is heavy with implication. /

Don’t misunderstand me: obviously schools have an educational role to play!! (Hence concern over distance learning, etc). But we can shut down learning for a few months and survive. We can’t fully shut down care (hence why most states have allowed child cares to stay open!): /

Here’s the rub: If the true, strip-away-all-pretense, deep-down reason we fully publicly fund K-12 schools is for their care component, then **there is no logical reason we don’t full publicly fund 0-5 child care**. The ONLY remaining reason is the legacy of sexism. /

The gap becomes explicable when you go down the hole of just how reluctant Americans still are to embrace working mothers of young children. We were chipping away at that pre-pandemic with proposals like those from Sen. Warren & Sen. Sanders. COVID-19 should act like dynamite. /

Once and for all, we need to do away with the idea that there is a fundamental difference between the first five years of life & the next thirteen years of life. (There are meaningful differences in how care & learning look, but so there is between elementary and high school!) /

If providing child care for older children provides enough societal good to be worth funding 100% publicly at no cost to parents, then so too should providing child care for young children. We can argue specifics - paid family leave option for year 1? - but call the question. /

There may be no other point in modern history that lays so bare how twisted and indefensible our perception is of what society owes to families w/children **based only on age**. Making child care a private burden should be an idea now discarded to the scrap heap of history. /end