This image was lost some time after publication.

The Reggio Emilia approach to preschool education is one of the major drivers behind Google's pending 70 percent hike in the company's daycare prices for its employees. What's Reggio Emilia? Wikipedia for once has a darned good writeup: "Teachers in Reggio Emilia assert the importance of being confused as a contributor to learning; thus a major teaching strategy is purposely to allow mistakes to happen, or to begin a project with no clear sense of where it might end. Another characteristic that is counter to the beliefs of many Western educators is the importance of the child's ability to negotiate in the peer group." I know, it sounds like a commie plot to keep the kids from doing any math. But Reggio Emilia methods are proudly used at Christ the King Early Childhood Learning Center, a Catholic operation in Missouri. It's always fun to watch Valley elites sputter their defenses when accused of having anything in common with red-state Christians. But they do: Daycare costs real money in the Show Me state, too.