> What's controversial is how much and what kind of support they deserve from society to overcome the disadvantage in environment.

I think calling that controversial is taking a side. We're talking about educating children, who are innocent, and greatly increasing the welfare and productivity of society.

Observing that there are sides is not taking one. They weren't even saying both sides have valid arguments, merely that people will argue about it.

It's more complicated than that: One side's claim is that it's controversial.

How do we handle that? Perhaps we require them to present a strong argument for why it's controversial.

If people argue over it, then it's controvercial. It doesn't matter if you think it should be or not. It doesn't matter how valid you think any of the arguments are.

That's one side's argument. You can argue with anything, and then it's 'controversial'. Round Earth vs flat? Controversial! Climate change? Controversial! Basic economics? Human rights? Freedom?

If there are two big sides arguing then that is the definition of controversial. Uncontroversial means there is no big opposition to it.

> You can argue with anything, and then it's 'controversial'.

Yes, that is the definition of the word. I am not sure why you try to define it as something else, something being controversial just means people don't agree about it.

Taking a side? I live in Portland. We passed a tax to make preschool free for all children. Rich people fought it tooth and fucking nail. This one thing that can have such a huge positive outcome was wildly controversial. It passed but man they are still fighting to repeal it. So calling it taking is side is wildly ignorant of the facts. And this is in bright blue Portland, not some red state educational desert.

Out of curiosity, why do they fight ? Is it because they don’t want to pay for it, and will put their kids in non free pre schools anyway ? ( I’m from Europe so the idea of fighting against free pre school for everyone sounds a bit odd )

They don’t want to pay another 1.5% tax. I guess if you’re kinda rich but not super rich you can’t avoid taxes the way super rich do. So this just pisses them off because they are just upset with taxes. I dunno if I made that much money seems like it wouldn’t be that big of a deal but I’ll never know. lol. It is just one city doing it and for just that city. I can see their point and maybe if the tax was smaller and applied to everyone we could all contribute but with the cost of living so high and how helpful preschool is for working families … people just don’t seem to like to help strangers that are worse off in America. It’s Everyman for themselves and their immediate family.

We'd have to find surveys to know that. One possibility is that it's reactionary politics: they are against liberals and attack them in every way possible. For example, being against car electrificiation, climate change as a fact, Covid vaccines, wearing masks, DEI, etc. It is the fundamental ideology of the right wing, it seems.

There's some evidence that preschool improves children's educational outcomes in the short to medium term, but actually is negligible or even harmful in the long term.

A study of Tennessee's pre-k program showed that students who went to pre-k outperformed students who didn't in first grade, but by sixth grade, they performed worse.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adn2141

This article says more research is necessary and I cannot read their methods so it is a bit disinegous to cite this as some kind of proof. Especially when the article says early education programs vary in content. Tennessee has one of the worst school systems in the US, #41:

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/public-scho...

And in terms of content, Tennessee bans the teaching of slavery, so I’d be suspicious of any study related to education done there:

https://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/2021/10/05/how-tenn...

Tennessee was the most stark example, but not the only one. And the fact that education is often sub-standard isn't a good case for more of it.

The point: it isn't blindly obvious that devoting even more of our children's lives to an education institution is necessarily best for them, in all cases.