TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL.

• Author: Farsad, Negin
• Position: HEMMING AND HAWING

My kid just turned three and, consequently, I've been touring pre-Ks. It can be hellish, especially when some of the tours are virtual and give you a feeling of digital nothingness. It can also be charming, such as when you get a glimpse of a really cute five-year-old seriously playing a game of chess while sitting on one of those little mini chairs.

But mostly, these tours make me feel like I don't know what I'm doing as a parent, that there are 3,000 good ways to raise a child, but what if I pick the wrong ones?

Modern parenting, it turns out, is hard. All of these fictional parents complaining on TV and in movies, all of these real parents kvetching about child-rearing on the news. I get it now. They aren't exaggerating. It. Is. Hard.

These school tours also give us insight into what our aspirational society looks like. It's as if the school is saying, "Look, we've got these three- and four-year-olds, they're nuts right now and just learned about boogers, but they also exist in a kind of Rawlsian 'original position where they haven't been ethically tarnished yet. We have an opportunity to refashion society here, with these little kids and their still-chubby fingers."

It's a grand goal, a necessary one, and reason alone for why teachers aren't paid enough.

What kind of society do we want to build for these preschoolers? The core mission of many of these public schools I've seen includes Inclusion, Kindness, Joy of Learning, Anti-Racism, Community Building, Caring, and Volunteerism, among other Noble Traits.

Part of me thinks that none of this is objectionable. If preschool teachers ran the world, we'd be thriving and we'd have more nap time. The other part of me is the child of immigrant parents with exceedingly ridiculous expectations. As I meander through these tours, a dark skepticism emerges.

I wonder: Why haven't they said anything about my three-year-old memorizing the multiplication table? At what point in elementary school will they start reading Descartes? If they learn about "feelings" and "community building," will that take away from their learning about "molecular bonding" and "microeconomics"?

Did you know that full-time working moms today spend more time with their kids than housewives did in the 1960s? That's hard to believe. Maybe it makes sense, if you want your kid to be operating a...