I think your wife's position captures the most important education aspect of pre-K: socialization. If kids can learn to share, communicate needs, and get used t

I think your wife's position captures the most important education aspect of pre-K: socialization. If kids can learn to share, communicate needs, and get used to schedules that's a huge boost for vast numbers of kids before getting to real school. Just being away from their parents for a while is an important adaptation for school. Consider a child with either far younger siblings or no siblings dumped into Kindergarten. They may not have any helpful social skills. If they have to spend their time learning them they're not learning actual education topics. It doesn't matter if the pre-K time was spent on bullshit lessons about insects or whatever. So long as the kids get to socialize and get a safe and relatively structured environment they're going to be far better equipped for school.