In the spring of 2005, the Bush administration announced that guidelines for following the mandates of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) had been made less restrictive. More of this "loosening" will follow, albeit quietly, lest the public discover the delusional qualities that went into the original version of the bill. Nevertheless, NCLB has had a huge impact on the public education endeavor in the United States, solidifying the ascendancy of the nation's "standards and testing" movement. This movement has placed a special burden on early childhood education--for it is widely believed that academic careers are made or broken in the early grades, when a child either learns to read well, poorly, or not at all. This article briefly examines two arguments. The first is based on currently ascendant views related to how people learn and the variety of ways they can be intelligent. The second is based on an alignment between education and the full range of life experiences congruent with the human condition.