There were a couple of articles out earlier this week regarding preschool and kindergarten education and the impacts thereof on the child’s later life. Here is the one on preschool and here is the one on kindergarten.
I’d meant to comment on these, but other duties continually get in the way. The thrust of the article on kindergarten is that a good teacher at that level can make a staggering difference in the future success of the children they teach. The pre-school article links to a study which shows similar findings, but approaches it from a non-IQ standpoint. Characteristics such as self-restraint and perseverance are learned in the early childhood years.
Most of the commentary I’ve read related to the article centers on what these studies might mean regarding public policy. Perhaps we should be spending more on early-years education and the like. But this misses the 800-lb gorilla in the room- what these studies really demonstrate is the importance of good parenting. A point that the vast majority of commentary I read doesn’t bother to make.
How do these studies about schooling demonstrate the importance of parenting? Because a child is only subject to a teacher’s influence for 6 or so hours out a day, for 5 days out of the week, for about 180 days of the year. The rest of the time, the child is under the influence of their parents. So if a teacher can be shown to make a difference with such little time, how can the parenting not make a bigger difference?
Speaking from my own experience, having had one child through and another working through her pre-school, my opinion is that the main advantage is socialization. Most other things the kids do are things the Wife and I ourselves do with them. We’ve been working on reading with them since they were old enough to listen for more than a few minutes at a sitting. We’ve already introduced them to numbers and math. We are constantly taking them to zoo’s or museums and pointing things out and challenging them in various ways emotionally and intellectually. So aside from learning how to get along with other kids, I have my doubts about the value of their pre-school education.
So why did we put them through pre-school? I mentioned socialization, but another reason is perception. Even though I think the advantages are dubious on substantial grounds, we didn’t want to disadvantage them because of a perception that they would be “wild-untamed” children without pre-schooling. Most teachers I’ve spoken with use the “had pre-schooling” metric as a heuristic for how much trouble a child will be.
I’m choosing to make the point about parenting because I don’t think it’s something that is emphasized enough. Too often, the approach is what government can do for the kids. Which inevitably leads to pissing contests about how public funds are allocated and who should bear the cost burden. If more emphasis were put on the difference parenting can make in a child’s life, I think more people would choose that path. It’s not to hard to see how that change that would in turn reduce the public policy need.
I know- obvious, simple … boring. Certainly not the way to become a public policy expert.