Column: Pre-K = National Security? Doesn’t compute

Richmond Times-Dispatch

Last week a group of retired military leaders held a press conference to make a novel pitch for a surprising cause: early childhood education. Noting that roughly 70 percent of military-age young people
are ineligible for enlistment, the warriors warned (as a retired Air Force general put it) that “we cannot allow today’s dropout crisis to become a national-security crisis.” Virginia Attorney General Bill Mims,
who joined the press conference, called “dollars spent on early-childhood education” a “force multiplier.”

It’s tempting to salute smartly and charge up the hill. Military service is a noble calling. Early-childhood education is an unalloyed good. So if military leaders say national security demands higher
spending for pre-K programs, then that settles the issue, doesn’t it?

No. Not at all.

First, the service branches already have little trouble finding suitable enlistees. News reports released the same day the retired brass held their press conference noted that “in July, more than 15,000 men
and women entered the U.S. active-duty armed forces, helping all branches of the military to meet or exceed their monthly quotas. . . . The Army expects to exceed its recruitment goal of 65,000 people
in fiscal 2009.” True, the recession has contributed to military recruitment. But the country is still at war, and it seems noteworthy that the services can fill their ranks even when recruits know they face a
good chance of getting sent to a combat zone.

The fact that 70 percent of military-age young people are ineligible, then, hasn’t prevented the services from meeting recruitment targets.

Greater eligibility might enable the services to choose better-qualified candidates — but that isn’t a foregone conclusion. It could simply mean more recruits would meet the bare minimum requirements.
Reducing Virginia’s dropout rate, for instance, is a worthy goal. But would doing that lead more honor-roll students through the doors of recruitment offices? Doubtful.

Digging A little deeper, one finds in the report from Mission: Readiness — Military Leaders for Kids that there are three principal reasons, not just one, for the low percentage of military eligibility.

Ten percent of young adults cannot enlist because of criminal history. The report argues that early childhood education reduces criminality, and includes some data to buttress the claim. But how many
young adults ineligible to enlist because of their record would have been eligible had they received better, or any, pre-K? That’s unclear.
Another 27 percent of young people cannot enlist because they are too fat. The Mission: Readiness report does not even try to explain how higher funding for early-childhood education programs would

correct that.
The report also notes — though for obvious reasons it does not dwell on — this:

“Many young people are disqualified from serving for various health problems, such as asthma, eyesight, or hearing problems. . . . Nearly a third (32 percent) of all young people have health problems —
other than weight — that will keep them from serving. When weight problems are added in with the other health problems, over half of young adults cannot join because of health issues.”

Indeed: 27 percent plus 32 percent equals 59 percent of young people who are ineligible for service for purely physical reasons unconnected to their academic ability. Some overlap might occur (a fat kid
with asthma), but this does not even count others who, the report notes, “are not eligible because they have drug or alcohol problems, are too tall, too short, or have other non-medical reasons making
them ineligible [such as] single parents with custody of a child.”

Throw in a couple of percentage points for those with criminal records, and it seems to be the case that even massive investments in early-childhood education would raise the ratio of enlistment-eligible
youths from three in 10 to . . . four in 10? Maybe?

To conclude from this that “increased investments in high-quality early education are essential for our national security” seems disingenuous. And that suggests another agenda might be at play.

Mission: Readiness is funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, a widely respected but aggressively liberal organization that has long agitated for bigger government. The suspicion here is that Pew is trying
to find a new argument for an old hobbyhorse: more intervention in the lives of children. Draping early-childhood education in the mantle of national security looks like a calculated way to make
conservatives sit up and applaud a cause they normally view with skepticism.

Conservative skepticism is warranted. But so is liberal skepticism. To reiterate a point made earlier: Early-childhood education is an unalloyed good as an end in itself. It can help individuals attain their
full human potential in later years. It seems less commendable if the aim of statist intervention in early childhood is not to serve the goal of realizing individual potential — but merely to ensure the nation-
state can maintain large standing armies with which to fight far-flung wars.

My thoughts do not aim for your assent — just place them alongside your own reflections for a while.

A. Barton Hinkle is the deputy editor of the Editorial Pages. Contact him at (804) 649-6627 or .