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NYC discovers that young children are remarkable learners

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Five years ago, my eldest daughter took a barrage of tests to qualify for the Gifted and Talented programs of the New York City public schools. Now, according to the New York Times educators have come to a remarkable realization: Young children are remarkable learners. When taught and coached, they do far better than without teaching and coaching.

Children Learn Constantly
If educational bureaucrats are hoping to find a measure of children that isn’t affected by their previous nurture, they’ll be looking for a long time. Of course some children have extraordinary innate abilities. I have met several of these children, and am in awe of what it would take to effectively challenge and engage these kids throughout their lives. However, even these children – and perhaps especially these children – are formed by their early environment. In an engaging and challenging environment (which some might call test prep), their young minds easily and eagerly learn what is far harder for us to learn later in life.

The Real Issue
The Gifted and Talented program in NYC is only partially about academic rigor. In many ways it is about social sorting. Gifted and Talented is a great proxy for early parental involvement. For even if a child has strong innate abilities, but an ambivalent or toxic home life, she isn’t likely to (1) have parents who sign her up to be evaluated (2) have the maturity and composure to complete the exams well, and (3) have the skills that other parents have intentionally cultivated in their children.

It really works this way. I was a NYC teacher. My daughter attended NYC public schools. The easiest way to see it is in who shows up. If you have two classrooms side by side, one gifted, and one general ed, the line of parents outside the door of the gifted classroom is probably twice or three times as long. They took the initiative to get them in, and they show perseverance in support.

The Real Question
If the Department of Education cracks this code, the real question is: How do you help all parents to foster a vibrant early learning environment? If you get that, then G&T testing will be a non-issue.

Strong families, Strong Communities, Strong Nation

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Last night in the State of the Union address, President Obama highlighted the critical importance of early childhood for the well-being of children, their families, communities and the nation.

“Study after study shows that the sooner a child begins learning, the better he or she does down the road.”

It isn’t when a child begins learning, but how and what he or she learns. Learning begins before birth regardless of the choices parents make. What a mother eats and drinks (and smokes) while pregnant affects a child’s learning capacities. From their first moment out of the womb, all children are immersed into a learning environment. The emotional attachment that children form (or fail to form) to their parents in the first year of life has a lifelong effect on learning. The tone and number of words that they hear in the first three years of life furnish them with the tools with which to explore the world.

In short, the President’s call to make preschool available to all children is laudable. Preschool really can be a wonderful learning environment for children. But the really great gains are made in interventions with families (not just children) even earlier in life. After all, without intervention to support parents, preschool is not prevention; it is remediation.

Childhood adversity and brain development

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There is a growing literature showing that the early experiences of children shape their brain architecture. Two days ago an article in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience added to that literature.

Kids who come from lower socioeconomic families have a harder time ignoring insignificant environmental information than children who come from higher income families, due to the fact that they learn how to pay attention to things differently . . . (from the press release)

The sample size of the study is very small (28 students), and so one can’t put too much weight on it. However, it does suggest that environmental factors in early childhood affect the way that we process information. Specifically:

“These results indicate that children from lower socioeconomic status have to exercise more cognitive control in order to ignore unimportant information than children of higher socioeconomic status.”

Now the question is whether socioeconomic status is the critical variable. Poor children are four times more likely to live in a father-absent home. Is it possible that certain types of home environments not only correlate with poverty, but in fact perpetuate it by their effect on children’s brain development?

Politics and Parenting

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On Saturday, Nicholas Kristof became the next op-ed thought leader (following David Brooks’ example) to engage Paul Tough’s new book How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character in his article Cuddle Your Kid.

He does it well by calling on our political leaders and candidates to recognize that nation-building hinges on family-building.

Yet the cycle [of poverty] can be broken, and the implication is that the most cost-effective way to address poverty isn’t necessarily housing vouchers or welfare initiatives or prison-building. Rather, it may be early childhood education and parenting programs.

It is not only the most cost effective way to address poverty; it is also the most pivotal way. If all other social institutions are restored, and the family remains in ruins, a community cannot thrive, because the family is the lynchpin of character formation, skill development, and cultural transmission.

But this isn’t just about poverty. It is about virtue. It matters no less what goes on in the homes of affluent children in early childhood. Indeed, it matters more because these children will grow to have even more cultural power to do good or harm to their neighbors. Indeed, they can be the ones who pioneer creative, merciful ways to strengthen and support shattered families.

I don’t hear anyone talking about that: neither of the presidential candidates; nor Paul Tough; nor Messrs Brooks and Kristof. Now is the time for that meaningful conversation to begin.

The Relational Approach

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A child’s early experiences affect every dimension of relationship, learning and health. In The Psych Approach New York Times columnist David Brooks highlights the correlation between adverse child experiences and long term life outcomes. Here’s the thirty thousand foot view: compared to those with no experience of childhood trauma, individuals who had suffered four traumatic childhood experiences were:

  • Seven times more likely to be alcoholics as adults
  • Six times more likely to have had sex before age 15
  • Twice as likely to be diagnosed with cancer
  • Four times as likely to suffer emphysema

“Later research suggested that only 3 percent of students with an ACE score [number of traumatic childhood experiences] of 0 had learning or behavioral problems in school. Among students with an ACE score of 4 or higher, 51 percent had those problems.” In short, your early experiences wire you for life, impacting your relationships, health, and ability to learn and thrive.

David Brooks calls this “The Psych Approach” because it turns attention toward the psychological impacts of “economic, social and family breakdowns.” In terms of treatment, the psych approach is probably a good description. However, with respect to prevention and restoration, The Relational Approach would be a more apt title. To break the patterns of family, social and economic breakdown, we must acknowledge that relationships are paramount – not least the relationship of a child to his or her father.

  • Children in father-absent homes are almost four times more likely to be poor.
  • Infant mortality rates are 1.8 times higher for infants of unmarried mothers than for married mothers.

Brooks concludes his column: “Maybe it’s time for people in all these different fields to get together in a room and make a concerted push against the psychological barriers to success.” It is indeed time for to bring people together to make a push against the relational barriers to human development and flourishing communities.

What Children Really Need is Character

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The New York Times Motherlode recently carried a post titled What Children Really Need for ‘Back to School.’ It a sentence, what children really need is character, because their character shapes how they will manage all of the challenges they face: at home, in the classroom, and in their vocations. Character is the primary factor that determines the joy or pain that they will bring to parents, teachers, colleagues and neighbors.

Children (and adults) build character by forming habits. Bad habits form bad character. Good habits form good character. Arthur Levine and Diane Dean highlight the bad habits of parents bailing out their children, overpraising them, and failing to teach them responsibility. Bad habits bear bad fruit in parents and children alike.

The beginning of a school year is a great time to ask hard questions:

  1. What are my bad habits that are forming bad character in myself and my children?
  2. What are the habits that we need to focus on and form in the next week, month, and year?
  3. What are the virtues that I most want to form in my children? What family routines and habit can help them to form those virtues?

The Remedy for the Opportunity Gap

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In a July 9, 2012 Op-ed titled The Opportunity Gap, New York Times columnist David Brooks identifies and laments that “children of the more affluent and less affluent are raised in starkly different ways and have different opportunities” – opening up an even greater chasm in society that threatens the social fabric.

Brooks wisely notes that while money plays a significant role, there is a huge gap in the time that parents of different educational levels invest in their children, and that the marriage gap plays a huge role in the time available to invest in children. He recognizes that the earliest years are the critical gap: “This attention gap is largest in the first three years of life when it is most important.”

Brooks offers two prescriptions for the opportunity gap: liberals need to insist that marriage comes before childbearing; and conservatives need to be willing to pay (in increased taxes or reduced benefits) for “programs that benefit the working class.”

There is another, more radical, prescription. It is for advantaged parents to build personal relationships with, and support, disadvantaged parents – especially in that critical period of early childhood.This approach has a host of benefits: (1) it doesn’t engage in blind finger pointing at either the “out of touch elites” or the “morally inferior underclass”, (2) cultural transmission of important values happens relationally rather than merely programmatically, and (3) perhaps most obviously it bridges widening social gaps by bringing people with very different experiences together – physically and relationally.

I have no illusions that this is easy. It isn’t; it is very hard work. But think about it this way: If you were poor or working class, who would you listen to? Policy pundits who say to get married before you have kids and enroll in government programs that address your issues, or real people who help you change diapers, listen to your story, and join you in reading books with your children? I can tell you whom I would trust more . . .

The Rediscovery of Character and The Heretical Imperative

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In a New York Times op-ed yesterday, David Brooks highlighted the legacy of James Q. Wilson. Brooks argues that Wilson should be remembered not just for his “broken windows” theory on how to reduce crime, but for his emphasis on the importance of character for social well-being.

“At root,” Wilson wrote in 1985 in The Public Interest, “in almost every area of important concern, we are seeking to induce persons to act virtuously, whether as schoolchildren, applicants for public assistance, would-be lawbreakers or voters and public officials.

Character is formed, necessarily, in community; and therefore the beliefs, values, and habits of the community are of utmost importance. That truth makes our current situation all the more disturbing. Peter Berger, a sociologist, has described our time as being constrained by “the heretical imperative.” We are commanded to choose our own values, beliefs, and religion. The normative structures that were passed down from generation to generation through tradition (meaning ‘to hand down’ or ‘to hand over’) are now challenged. The new norm is to choose your own.

The rediscovery of character as important is important. However, it is only the first step. Wilson was raised in a nation and generation that had a rich an stable tradition handed down to it. Our children desperately need a rich, robust tradition that tells them virtue is a norm to which they must conform – not one which they may define as they so please. Our children will be bear the fruit of our character, as they are apprenticed to us in discerning and cultivating virtue.

French Parenting and Apprenticeship

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NPR recently interviewed Pamela Druckerman, the author of Bringing up Bebe, on her observations of the uniqueness of French styles of parenting, and particularly what contributes to content, well-adjusted kids.

“We [Americans] assume … a little more that kids have inherent likes and dislikes, whereas the French view on food is the parent must educate their child and that appreciation for different food is something you cultivate over time,” Druckerman says.

One key to this cultivation of tastes appears to be exposure. Druckerman points out that in France, “there is no category of food called kids’ food. Kids and adults, from the start, eat the same thing.”

French parenting, like tiger parenting, helicopter parenting, and free-range parenting, is a mode of apprenticeship. It is initiating children into a way of seeing and experiencing the world. Children learn from their parents continually and implicitly what is normal and what is normative. In France, for example, it is normal for children to eat the same food as their parents, and to entertain themselves without parental supervision and interaction. French parents may or may not give thought to this. Regardless of the level of reflection, their children are apprenticed to them.

That’s why parenting matters, and why there are important lessons to learn from those who assume that their kids will develop a refined palate from trying all kinds of food from the start.

England riots: Where WERE the parents 10 years ago?

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In the recent riots in England, many have been asking, “Where are the parents?”

Diane Sawyer asked it in this ABC News clip:

It is a good question, but it doesn’t get to the root of the issue. As this Guardian article points out, the reason that parents don’t restrain their kids is that they long ago lost – or abdicated – their authority.

Head teachers’ [Principals’] leader Brian Lightman explained to the BBC:

He warns that too often schools are faced with pupils who have never had any boundaries in their home lives – where there has never been a sense of right and wrong.

“Parents are not willing to say ‘no’. That short, simple word is an important part of any child’s upbringing,” says Mr Lightman, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders.

“It’s desperately important that children have a sense of right and wrong. But we often come across children who have never been told that something is wrong.”

Likewise, Prime Minister David Cameron has charged, “There are pockets of our society that are not only broken, but frankly sick.”

Riots take a decade of character formation

How does a pocket of society get to the place of wanton looting? Very slowly.

It takes practice: doing the same thing again and again. Abdicating authority. Refusing to say ‘no.’ Treating children with contempt. Ignoring children. Leaving them to their own devices. If you do these things repeatedly over the course of a decade (or more), you will form the sort of character in a child that says, “We’re doing this to show the police and the rich people that we can do what we want” and that it “is the government’s fault.”

For better (or in this case for worse), children learn from their parents what is normal and normative from the earliest years of life. The question is not just where the parents were over the past week that their children were rampaging on the streets. The question is where they were over the past 10 to 18 years. The answer to that question will point more clearly to the sort of slow, hard solution that is needed.