Obama’s plan for comprehensive child care nothing new

In the lightest moment of Thursday’s morning address, President Barack Obama relayed the remarks of children he had visited earlier in the day at a Head Start center in Lawrence.
“I know you! I’ve seen you on TV!,” he mimicked the children’s high-pitched sing-songy voices. “You’re the Pah-ree-sident of the United States!”
The children’s eagerness and enthusiasm for learning were all he needed that day to reaffirm his commitment to early childhood education.
“We’ve done it before,” he said. “I mean, come on now, it’s 2015. What are we waiting for?”
Obama was referring to the Lanham Communities Facilities Act passed by Congress in 1941 to provide day-care centers for preschool children of mothers working in U.S. defense industries.
His own grandmother, in fact, benefited from such a program for her daughter, Ann. Madelyn Dunham assembled bombs at a Wichita plant for the U.S. effort in World War II, while her husband, Stan, fought overseas.
Over the course of WWII more than 1.5 million children, such as the president’s mother, attended one of the 2,800 public nursery schools. Parents paid a token fee — about $11 a day in today’s terms. Many of the nursery schools operated in conjunction with public schools to reinforce their educational component.
After the war, the virtually all-male Congress closed the program, with the expectation that women would return to their “proper place” in the home.
Of course that didn’t happen.
Turns out women enjoyed working just as much as men and their children thrived at the public nursery schools that employed bona fide teachers.
And though women continue to make up an integral part of the work force, the day care business has gone private and in some cases is no better than a babysitting service.
That’s a lost opportunity.
Studies show the children who attended the wartime nursery schools received a superior learning experience that translated into better lives. They were more likely to stay in school as they matured, less likely to have trouble with the law, and secured better jobs as adults.

IT’S ALL about creating an equal playing field to provide today’s children an opportunity to live up to their potential. Surely, that’s not a partisan issue.