If Not Now (Parents Still Count Even In Head Start)

NY Times ^ | 27 September 2007 | Will Okun

[shrinkermd]

...I argue frequently with my students about whether a child can succeed in school without parental support or involvement. Students believe in the power of the strong individual but often the playing field is too slanted, the teams too uneven. As early as preschool and Head Start, certain three-to-five-year-olds are already at a great advantage because of parental educational support while other children are beginning a lifelong struggle to keep pace.

...Children who are not learning basic skills in the home during the most important years of brain development (0-5 years) will enter kindergarten already at an educational disadvantage. Since new academic skills are continually based on previously learned knowledge, I do not believe that elementary and high schools alone can rectify this early educational disparity. Without parental support, involvement and interest, these students will likely continue to lag behind throughout their unhappy educational experience

“Our kids come to us at all different levels, but it is pretty clear which children have parents that are working with them at home,” reported Shelia Simpson (names changed), a Head Start instructor on the West Side of Chicago. “These children are much more verbal, can stay on-task, know numbers and letters, recognize patterns. Basically, they have already learned their basic skills.”

...Rachel Banks, another Head Start instructor, summarizes the widening gulf between students with and without education reinforcements at home: “The children who complete our voluntary take-home assignments with their mothers are the ones who can tell colors, count and know their ABC’s. The children who do not return the assignment do not know numbers or colors, but can sing all the words to a radio song and know all the television characters’ names.”

[shrinkermd]

Will Okun is a Chicago school teacher. He teaches English and photography in a Chicago school with many students from low-income and minority homes.

Ruby Payne has also written on this problem; you can find a summary and commentary HERE. Several quotes from her effort are:

...”The emphasis since 1980 in education has been on teaching. The theory has been that if you teach well enough, then learning will occur. But we all know of situations and individuals, including ourselves, who decided in a given situation not to learn. And we have all been in situations where we found it virtually impossible to learn because we did not have the background information or the belief system to accept it, even though it was well-taught and presented.” (page 88)

The author then goes on to review the extensive literature on this subject. What she finds is that “mediation” must occur before abstract learning. That is, before even entering school a child must learn to identify a stimulus, assign it meaning and develop a strategy of understanding and action. “Mediation” is defective in “poverty class” children and they have random/episodic memory, cannot plan, cannot predict, cannot identify consequences and have problems with impulsivity. (page 90)

She gives some common examples of defective cognitive strategies. One is an inability to see more than half a written page. Another is an inability to hold two objects in the mind at the same time and contrast them. There are many other examples.

Dr. Payne then gives three broad areas of intervention—input strategies, elaboration strategies and output strategies.

Dr. Payne is a lecturer and author. Her book,FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING POVERTY, has sold over 1,000,000 copies.

[wintertime]

“The children who complete our voluntary take-home assignments with their mothers are the ones who can tell colors, count and know their ABC’s.( from the article)
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All academically successful children are homeschooled. This is true even if they are institutionalized for their education.

The only thing an institutional school does is send home a curriculum for the parents to follow. The REAL education begins at the kitchen table.

[lonerepubinma]

The emphasis since 1980 in education has been on teaching.

What the hell was going on before the 80’s ?

[3Lean]

“The children who complete our voluntary take-home assignments with their mothers are the ones who can tell colors, count and know their ABC’s.( from the article)

If the children who don’t work at home with their parents aren’t learning these things at Head Start then why are we sending them there?

[kittymyrib]

“If the children who don’t work at home with their parents aren’t learning these things at Head Start then why are we sending them there?”

It’s a free babysitting service for the parent. It is an extremely expensive babysitting service for the taxpayer.
LBJ and the libs claimed to have good intentions when foisting all these worthless, extravagantly expensive War on Poverty schemes on the taxpayers of the U.S. in the ‘60s. We have now spent over 10 TRILLION dollars on this fiasco with no noticeable results, and this will go on until the country goes belly-up.
Conservatives ought to ask those Dems who are chaffing at spending billions on our military during wartime when we will be able to stop funding LBJ’s War on Poverty. I’d much rather spend tax money on bombs to defend our freedom, than on bums who don’t even want their own independence.