Begin as You Mean to Go On

I was listening to a podcast on the way to work this morning. The First Reader's commuter scooter is in the shop, so I made the run from home, to his work, and then back to mine. With a detour to put money in my son's lunch account as my daughter had texted me to let me know he'd left for school without his lunch. Sigh. So it was a lot of driving this morning, more than enough to listen to a whole Freakonomics 'cast on early childhood education.

I've talked before here about my dislike of the concept of moving the education age for children ever earlier and earlier. But after listening to the economists talking about various studies that have been done not only to study what works at preschool and earlier, but ways they are trying to help poor kids to overcome the gap they start school with, I realized I should expand on my issues with early childhood education. I don't have a problem with education starting at birth. Even before. I talked, sang, and played music to my unborn babies. Studies back up that maternal instinct: a baby born having heard loving voices is going to develop better than one who had to deal with drugs, alcohol, and stress while in fetal development. Babies that are loved and wanted thrive, and one of the ways they thrive is that they learn better.

But the reason I snip and snipe at 'preschool' is that it's not about the cognitive development. It's about forcing very young children into an environment that is advanced beyond their capacity for non-cognitive abilities to handle. Things like sitting still, and paying attention. Boys, in particular, are not ready at 3 or 4 to do that. Boys are not ready for that often until 7 or 8, and it means that their non-cognitive development lagging behind girls can lead to a lifelong handicap on the cognitive development as well. It's no wonder that we have a generation of suicidal and homicidal boys shuffling the halls of schools. The other thing that can handicap the educational progress of children is being in a single-parent environment. The 'cast pointed out that a huge part of mental development in infancy is how many words they hear, how quickly they process them, the level of language they hear (rich vocabulary), and the tone of voices used around them. In a single parent home, the children do not hear as many words, do not interact as often with parents (caregivers are rarely as engaged as parents and willing to engage even very small children in conversations, which is important. I say this as a former daycare worker. It isn't that you don't want to, it's that there's one of you, and several of them, and you just can't). As I was listening to the studies they were profiling, I was fascinated by the conclusions they drew. The takeaway? Being in the classroom very early isn't the big thing for education. Parental care and concern about education is the vital key. Parents who talk to, read to, and even just interact with their kids make more of a difference than anything else that they looked at. For some parents living in poverty in Chicago, one effort focused on teaching them how to teach their kids, and that made a difference. It's not about the classroom, it's about the home.

I grew up in a home where my parents sacrificed so Mom could stay home with us. I'm not sure they intended all along for us girls to be homeschooled, but very quickly they did that. We lived at or maybe just above the poverty line. My sister has her Master's degree, I have my Bachelor's, and my baby sister is severely handicapped and too a lot of Mom's attention while we were growing up (and to this day). Yes, we were all girls. But... Mom read aloud to us every night from the time we were... well, I can't remember not doing it, and I can remember back to an encounter with fire ants in Homestead FL and I was about 3! I also can't remember not being able to read. Mom thinks I was probably four and a half when I started reading. Mom and Dad never completed college. Dad is seriously dyslexic. But both of them are voracious readers (Dad's just a bit slower than Mom!) and I grew up in homes literally filled with books.

On the other hand, the First Reader, who is not one bit more stupid than I am, despite never formally finishing a degree, has a pile of advanced technical education from the Army and the Air Force. He grew up in a home where one parent was functionally illiterate (brilliant, but lacked the education), one read magazines, and both regarded him as a bit of a cuckoo's chick because he loved to read and buried his nose in a book from a very young age. You've read his work - this is not a man who is uneducated and ignorant.

The takeaway? encouraging kids to read, yes. But loving your babies, and talking to them, and engaging with them from an early age. Making sacrifices to stay home with them when they are babies, at least until they are three or four and have the majority of their brain development done. Set habits up of reading to them, talking about what you've read, and later, talking about what they are independently reading. Letting boys catch up to their non-cognitive development rather than retarding their development before forcing them into a classroom too early. I'm out of time and patience (I hate this keyboard!) for today, but I'll be back tomorrow with more...