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Peter, just six, is entering first grade this fall, already able to read independently and with great delight, at about third grade level. He can count as far as he wants to, do simple addition, subtraction and division, and he has a good grasp of what numerical symbols mean. His vocabulary is probably about twenty-five thousand words and he has developed many sound concepts about the natural and social sciences. He is eager, curious, fascinated by the world around him, responsive to adults, and happy. And because he is also self-confident, outgoing, and energetic, he finds it easy to make friends with other children.
But for Ted, also six, first grade is a threat. He can't talk well enough to make the teacher understand him. He has had no experience in interpreting even the pictures in his pre-primer, let alone the more complicated symbolism of the obscure black marks underneath the illustrations. It seems easier for Ted to withdraw, to look out the window, to keep quiet, rather than to try. Ted already feels that he is a failure, and he shows it in the classroom and on the playground.
Yet Peter and Ted started life - just a few miles apart in the same large city - with far less difference in innate mental ability than these first grade contrasts show. If they had been given an infant I.Q. test, they would both have scored in the same general range. They never will again. The differences between them now will almost certainly be self-perpetuating and will probably increase.
Peter, obviously, will be classified as a "bright" or "gifted" child. He will go immediately into the top reading group in his class. His eagerness to learn and his quick successes will please his teachers. He will bask in their approval, and this, plus the joy he has already experienced in learning will motivate him to keep trying and prevent him from being too discouraged if he draws a poor teacher or dull assignments. If he's lucky enough to be in an ungraded primary, he may even save a year of elementary school- time he can use to great advantage later for graduate study or for an earlier start in a profession.
It won't be long before Ted's teachers will stop expecting him to succeed. Even a patient, understanding teacher will find it hard not to become discouraged with Ted's obvious lack of effort and interest. Because of his lack of readiness and his deficiencies in language, Ted will be slow in learning to read and thereby handicapped in all of his other schoolwork. A sad, familiar cycle will probably begin. Because he can't keep up, Ted will begin to fail. Because he fails, he'll tend to stop trying. The less he tries, the less he will learn. Ted may spend an extra year in an ungraded primary. Or he, like about 10% of first graders, may have to repeat the year.
The contrast between Peter and Ted is not an exaggeration. There are hundreds of thousands of Peters in our first grades today the product of stimulation homes, of Montessori schools, of laboratory schools in university settings, of preschools where teachers practice early-learning priciples. Happily, children like Peter are increasing rapidly.
Boys and girls like Ted, however, can also be counted by the hundreds of thousands. Most come from poor homes, often with only a single parent. But some of the Teds also belong to affluent families where parents are too busy or too uninformed or too uninterested in seeing that their children get the mental nourishment they need.
In between the Peters and Teds are millions of other youngsters whose minds have not been stunted as much as Ted's nor stimulated as much as Peter's. What they bring to 1st grade they have learned chiefly by osmosis in homes where they are loved and cared for physically, but where their urgent need for mental stimulation has not been fully recognized.
What can you give your child between the ages of three and seven to boost his mental abilities and start him off to first grade confident and destined for success?
No preset curriculum can be devised that will fit all preschoolers from all homes, and all parents with their varying talents, responsibilities,and available time. Even if such a curriculum could be devised by extensive research, it would not be desirable. Youngsters are so active physically and mentally that no preplanned pattern of experience can take advantage of the opportunities for learning that constantly occur.
A small child's mind works so fast and reaches out in so many unexpected directions that you'd miss great teaching opportunities if you tried to stick to a prescribed, formal lesson pattern. One of the great advantages of preschool learning at home is that you can adapt it to the needs and immediate interests of each individual child - an opportunity for personalized learning that rarely occurs throughout your youngster's years of formal schooling until graduate level. How fast he will go on learning will depend on how much time you spend with him, his own individual speed and way of learning, how much early stimulation he has had before age three, and whether he attends a nursery school or a day-care centre which actively fosters intellectual development.
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