The Problem is Not that it is Excessive, But that it is insufficient

The Danes, no doubt in response to political pressure from the racist Dansk Folkeparti (DF, also called DPP) in parliament, have adopted a law mandating that families on public assistance Muslim ghettos must place their children in government run preschools.

It's supposed to teach them the language, and inculcate them in Danish culture.

The problem here is not that they are requiring this of Muslims on the dole, it's that they are not requiring every child whose family needs public aren't in these schools together, in integrated classrooms, learning that their backwards bigoted parents on both sides of this religious divide are wrong:

When Rokhaia Naassan gives birth in the coming days, she and her baby boy will enter a new category in the eyes of Danish law. Because she lives in a low-income immigrant neighborhood described by the government as a “ghetto,” Rokhaia will be what the Danish newspapers call a “ghetto parent” and he will be a “ghetto child.”

Starting at the age of 1, “ghetto children” must be separated from their families for at least 25 hours a week, not including nap time, for mandatory instruction in “Danish values,” including the traditions of Christmas and Easter, and Danish language. Noncompliance could result in a stoppage of welfare payments. Other Danish citizens are free to choose whether to enroll children in preschool up to the age of six.

Denmark’s government is introducing a new set of laws to regulate life in 25 low-income and heavily Muslim enclaves, saying that if families there do not willingly merge into the country’s mainstream, they should be compelled.

For decades, integrating immigrants has posed a thorny challenge to the Danish model, intended to serve a small, homogeneous population. Leaders are focusing their ire on urban neighborhoods where immigrants, some of them placed there by the government, live in dense concentrations with high rates of unemployment and gang violence.

Politicians’ description of the ghettos has become increasingly sinister. In his annual New Year’s speech, Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen warned that ghettos could “reach out their tentacles onto the streets” by spreading violence, and that because of ghettos, “cracks have appeared on the map of Denmark.” Politicians who once used the word “integration” now call frankly for “assimilation.”

That tough approach is embodied in the “ghetto package.” Of 22 proposals presented by the government in early March, most have been agreed upon by a parliamentary majority, and more will be subject to a vote in the fall.

Let's be clear, there are additional parts of these statutes are really horrible, things like arbitrary increases in penalties in Muslim ghettos, but the bulk of outrage is directed at tying preschool to welfare payments.

Not only would this be applied across Denmark, it should be applied across the United States.

It's called mandatory schooling, and universal Pre-K.

H/t Naked Capitalism.