Volume 13, Number 6 · October 9, 1969
Up Against It
By Herbert R Kohl
The Devil Has Slippery Shoes: A Biased Biography of the Child Development Group of Mississippi
by Polly Greenberg
Macmillan, 704 pp., $14.95
For a while during the mid-Sixties, the Headstart program seemed to many the most promising of the 'anti-poverty' operations carried on by federal and local authorities. Designed for very young children, it involved parents by requiring them to help out in nursery school; it made use of experts in child development and primary education; it had a catchy and politically neutral name, and in no way threatened the existing public schools. The children in the Headstart program were not only too young for the public schools but also too young to have ideas of their own. The defiance found among Job Corps youth couldn't be expected from three and four-year-olds. The parents of Headstart children could also be counted on to teach colors and forms, to feed the children and play with them, and not spend their time organizing politically. Moreover Headstart was ideal in another way. It was a preparation for adjusting to public school. One idea behind it was that if young children were caught early enough they would learn to obey the teacher, observe the rules, and speak standard middle-class English; they would then fit more comfortably into the public schools.
Review, 3004 words
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