Educare: new product, new future

On September 2, 1990, something very informative about the evolution of early childhood programs in the minds of people appeared in The New York Times. Perhaps only another historian of trivia would have noticed it, but it was significant. The Sunday crossword puzzle had the following cue for 4 down: "Places for day-care" (spelled, with the purist's uncertainty, with a hyphen). Even such a cautious horizontal-vertical weaver as I am did not have to wait very long before filling in the correct 10 letters: "preschools." Preschools = day-cares; day-cares = preschools. I am told that actors and authors and scientists know that they have it made when their names are required as solutions in a Times crossword puzzle. If so, perhaps we now have tangible proof that those of us have at last been heard who have urged acceptance of the concept that early childhood education (or preschool education) and child care (or day care) are really one and the same essential service operated for different lengths of time. Day care, the illegitimate child of the scientific field that gave birth to the early childhood movement, has turned out to be the only offspring sufficiently well endowed and robust to make it in the modern world. It is the only one possessing the characteristics that will enable it to take the family enterprise into the future. At this juncture, near the close of the century during which programs for young children multiplied to the point where they cannot be ignored as significant factors in family and public life, we are on the threshold of a new era.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)