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Thirty percent of Missouri families
with youngsters under three were on the PAT program at the start of the 1990s. The cost
per family was approximately $250 a year, of which the state provided $180 and the school
district found the rest. So to provide that service to every American family with children
up to three would cost $3-billion a year for 12 million youngsters. That's only about
twice what tiny Singapore (with Oregon's population) is spending equipping its schools
with computers.
But Former Harvard Professor Burton L. White, who
played a big part in establishing the program, has ended his involvement with PAT because
he says it is "hopelessly underfunded".28 To do the job
properly, he says, would require much higher spending - and it should be top priority. He
says not more than one American child in ten gets adequate development in the vital first
three years of life. "This state of affairs may be a tragedy," he
says, "but it is by no means a twentieth-century tragedy. In the history of Western
education there has never been a society that recognized the educational importance of the
earliest years or sponsored any systematic preparation and assistance to families or any
other institution in guiding the early development of children."29
Professor White says the period from when a child
starts walking up to two years is most important. "Every one of the four educational
foundations - the development of language, curiosity, intelligence and socialness - is at
risk during the period from eight months to two years."
He says bluntly that "our society does not train
people to raise children". Today he runs a model program at his Centre for Parent
Education in Waban, Massachusetts, and dreams of the day when nations make similar
projects the top educational priority. So do we.
Professor Diamond, however, sounds a note of caution:
"I do worry when people say things like 'Well, if you don't do something by three
years of age forget it; you've closed the opportunity to stimulate that brain.' We don't
want to give the impression that all of cortical input is essential that soon, though it
is true for certain functions to reach optimal development, such as vision, hearing, and
beginning language."30
Adds Professor Robert Sylwester: "The best time to
master a skill associated with a system is just when a new system is coming on line in
your brain. Language is a good example. It's very easy for a two- or three-year-old to
learn any language. But if that person waits until 18 to 30, learning a new language will
be more difficult because the systems governing this have been used for something else.
Many skills, like
Contents Page Preface
Introduction
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