I worked with a guy who had grown up in the church, in a married Christian home, and dumped his Christianity in college. We were talking about education, and I showed him studies about what young children need in order to thrive. He insisted that his wife needed to work for true equality of the sexes, and that children did better in “school” anyway. That’s what he called the pre-K program.

Well, here’s the latest large-scale study on pre-K’s effects on children, reported by Independent Women’s Forum:

A new study of state-run pre-K… found that it has long-term negative effects on children’s achievement and behavior.

The study is the most rigorous look at state-run pre-K to date.  The authors followed through sixth grade over 2,900 children from low-income families who applied to Tennessee’s pre-K program, and compared the students who were randomly admitted to the program with students who were not (the “control children”).  It is one of the few randomized studies of pre-K, and it has a longer follow-up period than other studies.  Based on parent interviews of a portion of the control children, the authors found that most of them (63%) received home-based, familial care, instead of attending pre-K.

Measuring the effects of pre-K from kindergarten to third grade:

In 2016, the authors initially reported “significant positive immediate effects” of pre-K, based on achievement measures conducted at the end of the pre-K program.  By the end of kindergarten, however, most of those positive effects were no longer statistically significant, and by the end of third grade, certain measures had turned slightly negative.

What about the next phase – fourth grade to sixth grade?

The new study reports on the next phase of the study, which measured the effects of pre-K through sixth grade.  As to achievement outcomes, the authors found that the “control children continued to outperform” the pre-K children “in reading, mathematics, and science with statistically significant differences larger than those observed in third grade,” and that the control children were significantly less likely to require special education services.  As to behavioral outcomes, the authors found that the control children had higher attendance rates and fewer disciplinary infractions than pre-K children, with the differences again being statistically significant.

Were these negative outcomes due to the quality of the pre-K program being studied?

The authors considered, and rejected, the possibility that these negative effects might be attributable to the quality of Tennessee’s pre-K program, explaining that “[a]mong state-funded pre-K programs, the TN program is above average and arguably in the top tier on characteristics many believe mark high quality.”  They additionally note that their results are consistent with other studies of pre-K programs and Head Start, which tend to show initial positive effects that fade over time, and with studies indicating “long-term negative outcomes on behavior for children in group care.”

When it comes to children, the attitude of people on the secular left seems to be “children will do well and be happiest if I do what I want to do, and they just adjust to my selfishness”. Secular leftists aren’t out here bounding their decision-making with studies about what does and does not work for children. They’re going to do what makes them feel good, what makes them look good to their co-workers, or other selfish adults.

What people want to hear today is that your wife is working, and she is earning a lot of money. And you want to tell them that. You want to tell them how on board you are with “equality”, and how opposed you are to “sexism”. So you put your wife into an office, and put your kids into daycare and pre-K. But according to the studies, that doesn’t work for your kids. But what do you care? It works for you. Your co-workers like you. You feel smart. You sound smart to the people you want to impress. You’ll rise high in your profession. You can afford to buy a boat AND a vacation home.

I’m not so young that I don’t remember when all of the talking heads in the White House, the corporate media and Big Tech, were labeling the lab leak theory of COVID origins as “false news” or a “conspiracy theory”. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. were all handing out bans and suspensions to anyone who talked about it. The journalists in the corporate news media labeled the theory a “conspiracy”.

So what’s true? Let’s take a look in the Wall Street Journal and see.

Excerpt:

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Energy Department has concluded that the Covid pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak, according to a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress.

The shift by the Energy Department, which previously was undecided on how the virus emerged, is noted in an update to a 2021 document by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines’s office.

The new report highlights how different parts of the intelligence community have arrived at disparate judgments about the pandemic’s origin. The Energy Department now joins the Federal Bureau of Investigation in saying the virus likely spread via a mishap at a Chinese laboratory.

[…]The Energy Department’s conclusion is the result of new intelligence and is significant because the agency has considerable scientific expertise and oversees a network of U.S. national laboratories, some of which conduct advanced biological research.

[…]The FBI employs a cadre of microbiologists, immunologists and other scientists and is supported by the National Bioforensic Analysis Center, which was established at Fort Detrick, Md., in 2004 to analyze anthrax and other possible biological threats.

So, what were the corporate news media saying about this theory, before the FBI and Energy Department labeled it as the “most likely” explanation?

• The New York Times: Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins
• Washington Post: Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked
• CNN: Tom Cotton is playing a dangerous game with his coronavirus speculation
• MSNBC: Cotton repeats coronavirus conspiracy theory, despite evidence
• The Hill: Sen. Cotton repeats coronavirus origins conspiracy theory
• Business Insider: A GOP senator keeps pushing a thoroughly debunked theory that the Wuhan coronavirus is a leaked Chinese biological weapon gone wrong
• Huffington Post: Sen. Tom Cotton Still Pitching Debunked Theory About Coronavirus
• The Atlantic: The Pro-Trump Culture War on American Scientists
• Scientific American: Eight Persistent COVID-19 Myths and Why People Believe Them: (Myth #1: THE VIRUS WAS ENGINEERED IN A LABORATORY IN CHINA)
• Science: (peer-reviewed journal): Scientists ‘strongly condemn’ rumors and conspiracy theories about origin of coronavirus outbreak

Why are people in the corporate media (and mainstream science publications) spreading lies about this story?

Well, I think it’s because many of these journalists either don’t have STEM degrees, or they don’t have any experience using their STEM degrees in private sector STEM careers.

There is something that happens in American schools, where the laziest students realize that they can get high grades with low effort, simply by agreeing with the teachers. According to voting records and political contribution records, the teachers are almost entire far-left progressives, so these students just adopt far-left views. The goal of these students is not really to understand how to do anything in the real world. They don’t want to write code or fix cars or wire up a house for electricity. They don’t read books by Thomas Sowell, just what the teacher says will be on the true/false or multiple choice tests. They just want to get back to drinking, drugging, hooking up and partying. And that’s really what’s going on in these places. The people who get to the top either dropped math in grade 9, or they never used math in a real competitive private sector environment. They just repeat whatever gets them public approval.

Look at this article from the New York Post, talking about the biased writers at the New York Times:

Academics joined this chorus in marginalizing anyone raising the theory. One study cited the theory as an example of “anti-Chinese racism” and “toxic white masculinity.”

As late as May 2021, the New York Times’ Science and Health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli was calling any mention of the lab theory “racist.”

She embodies the model of the new “advocacy journalism” at the Times. Reporters who remained wedded to the dated view of objective journalism were purged from the ranks of the Times long ago.

Mandavilli and others made clear that reporters covering the theory were COVID’s little Bull Connors. She tweeted wistfully “someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not yet here.”

Something to think about. Be careful where you get your news. A lot of people who work in the corporate news media are just there because they are angry at Christians and conservatives for making them feel bad about their heavy drinking, their drug addictions, their divorces, their abortions, their pedophilia, their use of prostitutes, their infertility, their childlessness and singleness at age 40, etc. They are neither willing nor capable of determining truth about STEM issues like viruses. They just write what makes them look good and feel good about the terrible choices they’ve made with their own crappy lives.

A lot of these people on the secular left think that the universe has always existed. That cosmic fine-tuning for complex life in the universe isn’t real. That the origin of life was caused by unobservable aliens. They think that men can become women, and women can become men. They think that two men or two women will be as good for raising a child as two married biological parents who attend church every week. They think that embryos are just clumps of cells. They think that raising minimum wage does not cause unemployment to rise for young, unskilled workers. Just ignorance to the point where they respond like insane people. Why trust mentally ill people about anything?