|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
How to Prepare Children for School
| Article
# : |
20209 |
|
|
Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
|
| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1992 |
3,550 Words |
| Author
: |
Linus Wright
Linus Wright is a former undersecretary of the U.S.
Department of Education. From 1978 to 1987, he was
superintendent of the Dallas Independent School District.
Since 1989 he has served as president and chief executive
officer of Ideal Learning, Inc., an educational computer
software company located in Irving, Texas. |
One of our six National Education Goals is to ensure that every child enters school ready to learn. In some ways it is the most important of all the goals; certainly it is the least understood. The majority of Americans don't realize that every fall large numbers of our children come to kindergarten or the first grade already doomed to failure. For example, teachers actually encounter six-year-olds who have a vocabulary of fifty words or less; yet research indicates that unless first-graders know at least eight hundred words, their chances of staying the course until graduation are minimal. Somehow we have to reach these children before they enter the classroom, because we have neither the time nor the trained personnel to tackle this problem effectively after they are in the public schools.
An impoverished vocabulary is only one of many problems that we face in dealing with children entering school for the first time, particularly those who have grown up in large urban areas. Many are undernourished, both physically and emotionally. Some are ill. Most have little incentive to take advantage of the education afforded them. Currently, federal and state governments are funding research to devise strategies for addressing these problems. In the meantime, some people are offering proposals that would cost billions of dollars, with no assurance that they would work. So everyone is aware that we must do something about these children, if for no other reason than they are the human capital upon which the future must draw.
Unfortunately, too many people are waiting for the federal state, and local governments to come up with the answers to our educational problems. Over the past several decades we have begun to change from a society in which the family provided basic care and nurture for children to one in which institutions have replaced the family in these important areas. The price we have paid for this enormous shift in responsibility is heavy, and we should not completely abandon a successful system in order to embrace one that has not yet proven itself. We must revitalize the role of the family in the education of our young people.
Remember that parents are still their children's first teachers. What occurs in the first four or five years of a child's life often has a decisive effect on what happens in the next twelve or thirteen years--or, for that matter, the next fifty. So parents and other concerned adults must learn to accept the responsibility of educating children from the moment they enter the world--and to take some steps even prior to their birth. Unless the family reasserts its authority and reemphasizes its
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
