ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, August 15, 1996 TAG: 9608150080
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ELIZABETH SIMPSON LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
A REPORT by a consultant accuses two day cares of teaching children radical ideas and accuses a council of "contract steering."
Radical ideology. Politicized curriculum. Values that are contemptuous and antagonistic of traditional values.
In Virginia, those are fighting words, and when you're talking about curricula for children in day-care centers, they're enough to make a parent tremble.
That's why a report using those phrases to accuse two child-care and early education organizations of indoctrinating young children with liberal ideas has created such a furor.
The report, written at the request of a now-defunct Virginia council on child care, accuses the National Association for the Education of Young Children and the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies of infiltrating the state's child-care system with radical ideas. It also says the groups promote a college curriculum aimed at turning out ``politically correct'' day-care professionals.
The accusations, contained in a June letter and report, have so angered members of those organizations and other child-care professionals that the report has landed on the agenda of a legislative panel meeting Friday in Richmond.
The Commission on Early Childhood and Child Day Care Programs, a panel of state legislators charged with overseeing the development of a quality day-care system in the state, hopes to clear the air over the report by opening the topic to discussion.
``We're concerned,'' said Sen. Stanley Walker, D-Norfolk, who leads the commission. ``The report waves a flag around that is not in the best interest of improving child care in Virginia. It puts the fear of God in people.''
The report grew out of allegations that the state Council on Child Day Care and Early Childhood Programs had mishandled federal grant money. Gov. George Allen removed the entire council last year after a public audit revealed errors in grant disbursement, and appointed a new panel, which hired a consultant to look further into the matter. The consultant's report was one of the last acts of business for the council, which was killed by the General Assembly and ceased to exist in June.
The consultant that the new council hired, Mark D. Kindt, reported that $1.4 million of the funds had been improperly awarded by the previous council. Kindt found that recipients of three grants, one of which is The Planning Council in Norfolk, participated in a ``round table'' where contract specifications were drafted. Kindt said this could amount to illegal contract steering. The records and report have been turned over to the FBI.
But Kindt's report didn't stop there. He went on to accuse the previous council - and the state of child day care in general - of being influenced by groups with a liberal agenda. And the council's last president, R. Jefferson Garnett, wrote a letter to Allen saying that the National Association for the Education of Young Children peddles an ideology that is ``contemptuous of and antagonistic to the traditional values of Virginians.''
Garnett's letter also said ``a pernicious ideology has been promoted nationally in child day care and has marched into Virginia unencumbered by the penetrating light of vigorous public debate.''
Garnett, a Louisa lawyer who describes himself as a Republican conservative, said he welcomes the discussion the report has stirred.
``The folks who have had the prevailing philosophy have done so without public debate,'' Garnett said in a telephone interview. ``NAEYC has dominated the child-care field. It's time we level the playing field.''
But the organizations on the receiving end of the criticism say the report unfairly besmirches their reputations and is nothing more than right-wing rhetoric.
``Most of our members are appalled and wounded by these charges,'' said Carol Whitener, president of the Virginia Association for Early Childhood Education, the state chapter of NAEYC. ``The charges are so absurd and off-the-wall and outrageous, it's hard to know how to react. The reputations of a lot of people have been attacked, and they have no chance to speak back in their defense.''
One of the specific complaints brought up in the report is a book called the Anti-Bias Curriculum, which NAEYC publishes. The book has a recommended reading list that includes books that encourage children to learn about different roles of women, a book about a child growing up in a family in which the father is in prison, and another book about a girl who lives with three women instead of a traditional father-mother family.
The consultant said many parents would find the Anti-Bias Curriculum ``an inappropriate intrusion upon their rights of family privacy; some will object to sex education for preschool children, some will value the integrity of more traditional gender roles.''
Whitener said the book, which is supposed to encourage diversity, is one of 100 publications the organization puts out and the NAEYC does not require day-care centers to use it. She said few centers in Virginia do.
Aside from that, though, she voiced concern about the attack on diversity teaching.
``When tolerance for other people is considered pernicious we're in big trouble,'' said Whitener, who teaches child development at Tidewater Community College.
Garnett said he realizes people today live in a diverse society, but he said various groups differ on how diversity ought to be taught and what subjects should be included.
The report also says the NAEYC and the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies are guilty of setting up standards that increase the cost of day care and decrease availability and choice to parents.
The organizations, however, defend the standards as improving the quality of child care. Any attack on them would water down safety to the detriment of children, they say.
The report, which calls for open and vigorous public debate on day-care policy, will jump-start that discussion Friday. A representative from the Virginia Association for Early Childhood Education and a representative from the state's community college system have been asked to testify, along with Walter Kacharski, the state's auditor of public accounts.
``How we go about clearing the air, I don't know,'' Walker said. ``But we can start by having a discussion.''
Meanwhile, Garnett says he hopes the debate continues long past Friday's meeting, to which he was not invited, norand which he does not plan to attend. ``The topic is important enough it will take on a life of its own.''
The Commission on Early Childhood and Child Day Care Programs meets Friday at 10 a.m. in Senate Room B in the General Assembly Building in Richmond. Copies of the report are available by calling (804) 692-0006.
LENGTH: Long : 118 linesby CNB