Helping kids learn

Combine the report of a legislative task force on teaching very young children and the conclusions from the Kids Count Data Book and the path for parents is clear. They and others who care for children need access to better information about the crucial learning years of early childhood to help kids learn as well as they can.

Maine children start school at age 5 but all of them begin learning — some intensely — long before that. Parents are by far the most influential sources of knowledge for pre-school children, but what parents know to impart varies widely. The legislative task force met to look for ways for all children to be given the opportunity to learn during these very important years.

Maine already has some groups working to make that happen. Healthy Families, Parents as Teachers, Parents are Teachers Too and a half dozen other groups direct their resources to helping new families. Their rationale is simple: If the brain does not fully develop during the first three years of a child’s life, it undergoes a physical change — a loss of synapses — that will make learning more difficult in later years. Instructors of foreign languages essentially have been saying this for a generation or more; improved technology now lets scientists identify the actual brain activity — or lack of activity.

The task force agreed on some logical steps the state could take based on this information. It should, for instance, further support programs that currently are working for families. It should develop a basic curriculum for parents and caregivers in search of specific steps for teaching children. It should encourage brain development and the responsibilities of parenting in life-skills courses for older children. The value of these suggestions is in their recognition that parents and caregivers and not a government agency are the ones who will make the difference in a child’s life.

That’s why the Kids Count information is so disturbing. A multi-state study in the new version of the annual data book found that only one in 12 infant and toddler rooms at child-care centers provided developmentally appropriate care. (Forty percent, according to the study, offered a potential threat to a child’s health or safety.) With 70 percent of women with pre-school age children expected to work out of the home by 2000, the number of children who will be spending many hours each day missing opportunities to learn is frightening.

There aren’t any secrets to providing safe, stimulating child care. What is required is an understanding of the shortcomings in the current system and a willingness to do something about it. Rep. Tom Allen recently introduced two bills that would help states raise standards while keeping care affordable and helping local school districts to use their facilities for pre-school instruction. Those measures could help, as would more conferences like the one two weeks ago in Northport, where educators learned how to use the latest research on brain development.

The strongest force this new understanding of learning has going for it is that parents want to see their children do as well as possible. If Maine, recognizing the enormous benefits of having a well-educated society, can provide solid information in what young children can learn, how to teach it and offer access to high-quality day care, parents, in almost all cases, will be more than willing to do the rest.