This guy is right on it….
The Republicans are always trying to cut funding for early childhood development, Head Start and other proven effective programs, so I’m afraid as long as the GOP controls the House, there is little chance of anyone listening…
Plus, the GOP really doesn’t want educated voters with strong critical thinking skills. Then they could see the GOP is all smoke and mirrors…
From Jerome Kagan in the Christian Science Monitor.
Although schools play a major role in teaching children the basic skills required for jobs in an advanced economy, the family remains the primary institution that prepares children to take maximal advantage of formal schooling and motivates them to persist despite difficulty.
Parents are key to school preparation. A child’s academic training begins long before he or she sets foot in school. Studies show that more-educated parents instill patterns of thinking, processing information, and early reading instruction that form a vital foundation for later learning.
Sadly, children born to parents who have not graduated from high school are more likely to enter primary school less prepared for instruction and less motivated to learn these vital skills than those children growing up with college-educated parents. Yet most social scientists advising government on education reform do not emphasize the importance of changing the attitudes, behaviors, and opportunities for less-educated parents with low socioeconomic status.
The best predictor of reading and arithmetic skills in the early grades of school is the education of the parents. This relationship can have a major effect, because parents without much schooling are less likely to read to their children, to engage in reciprocal conversation and play, encourage improvement of their children’s intellectual talents, and promote in their children the belief that they can effectively alter their current conditions.
AND
These ethical considerations are inadequate excuses for failing to implement programs designed to help families caught in poverty – many of whom have lost faith in the national premise that all citizens are entitled to an equal opportunity for a satisfying life.
These programs can enhance the prospects of many children who otherwise might later require costly remediation programs that do not guarantee success because they intervene too late to offset the child’s already entrenched educational disadvantage and discouragement. Such later interventions rarely mute a family’s anger at a system that, by then, seems to be indifferent to their plight.
Programs that target early parental instruction don’t just change students’ lives, they have the potential to reform entire education systems.
via Want better students? Teach their parents. – Yahoo! News.
Lost in the 21st Century 