The Birth of Head Start: Preschool Education Policies in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations (review)

Drawing on traditional methods and straightforward approaches—government documents mostly, and previously published studies and memoirs—Vinovskis fails to add anything new to the story of the origins of Head Start despite constant and irritating assertions to the contrary: "Most studies . . . begin . . ." (12); "previous studies focus almost exclusively on . . ." (71); "most studies . . . overlook . . ." (80); "this analysis . . . provides a rather different perspective than do most earlier studies" (145). The book is a solipsistic, performative stutter worthy of a credulous doctoral student, not an established senior scholar.

Vinovskis frames his story inside the received wisdom of those times, repeating cliché after cliché from the official narrative: "the belated discovery of poverty" (5), "the ignorance of young, disadvantaged children" (180), "extreme cultural and intellectual deprivation and isolation" (88). We get the gloss of tragic assassinations and a political convention "marred by antiwar activists" (138), as well as the predictable bemoaning of "political expediency" that would both allow the "controversial" involvement of poor people in decisions that affect their lives and rush Head Start into being on a large scale, "ignoring the advice of experts" (154).

Vinovskis' neat and linear prescription for social change is to develop experiments and pilot programs run by academics first, and then to let the government scale them up in an orderly and generously funded second step. There's no room for the "maximum feasible participation" of the poor and no need for any social movements that simply distract, mislead, or muddy things up.

Intent on highlighting a specific flaw in Head Start, Vinovskis resorts to internally contradictory assertions like, "early evaluations indicated that the programs did not significantly help poor children make long-term intellectual gains" (87; italics added). The current debate about Head Start—still wildly popular, still massively underfunded—is about whether to maintain and possibly even strengthen its comprehensive approach to child development, or to focus exclusively on a narrow academic agenda. Although the early childhood community is decisively on the side of broad development, Vinovskis is consciously siding with the crowd advocating "the need to teach Head Start children their alphabet" (180). Nothing new.