Research Paper outline
TLu
LucasTrachelleECEResearchPaper.docxTrachelle Lucas
English 1A-20644
Joette Whims
Research Paper
November 14, 2017
The Most Important Education in Life
It has been common knowledge, for ages, that babies start to learn about the environment and their surrounding world from a very young age, including at the prenatal, (immediately before birth) and postnatal periods (immediately after birth). The very early experiences of a child including those bonds that they form with their parents, as well as the first learning experiences, have been established to deeply impact their future cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development. It is, therefore, sound to argue that optimizing the early years of a child’s life is the best investment that a parent or any other individual can make in society to ensure the future success of the child (Camilli et al.). This investment is done through the provision of education, which begins from the very moment that the baby is taken home from the hospital after being delivered, and goes on until the child starts going to the playgroups and kindergarten. The capabilities of human beings to learn continue for the rest of the years they will be alive, but its intensity is never as huge as the one exhibited during the preschool years. Owing to these facts, it is necessary to give the babies and toddlers early learning experiences to be able to aid their social, intellectual, and emotional development. This process lays down the foundation on which their later school success will be built (Belfield). This is because the physical abilities, progress, and mental growth of the child, grows at an astounding rate and that the highest percentage of learning happens between birth, and age of six (Camilli et al.) THEREFORE, WHAT INDIVIDUALS REQUIRE TO GET AHEAD IN LIFE, IS ACTUALLY DETERMINED BEFORE THEIR ENTRY INTO KINDERGARTEN BECAUSE THAT IS THE TIME WHEN THE BRAIN IS UNDERGOING RAPID DEVELOPMENT IN BUILDING COGNITIVE SKILLS, EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING, SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL GROWTH, AND THE GROSS-MOTOR SKILLS NECESSARY FOR FURTHERING THEIR EDUCATION.
The Early Years
Before having an in-depth discussion regarding the significance of the early childhood education, it is crucial to identify the actual meaning of the age that satisfies this description. When individuals talk about the early years of a child, they tend to mean the same thing in slightly different means. To some individuals, they tend to mean the years between the birth of the child, and eight years. To others, it means those years before the child goes to school, while the final group refers to the first three years of a child’s life since his/her birth. One thing that all these periods have in common is that they are comprised of a very crucial or rather a critical stage in a person’s life. In this discussion, the early childhood years discussed are comprised of the period between the birth of a child, and their entry into the kindergarten year, commonly referred to as the pre-school stage, and the early phase of their kindergarten life (Gormley 878). During this period, the most significant thing that people can do is to offer children real opportunities for them to have fun, learn, and develop during these years, irrespective of the term that we have used to refer to early years.
Importance of Pre-Kindergarten Education
Most individuals tend to have reservations when it comes to the significance of pre-kindergarten education. This point was vividly manifested in 2006 when the legislature in the state of California fruitlessly attempted to pass a law which would have made the pre-school education mandatory for every child (Love et al.). Most of the individuals in California did not agree with the significance of having the state take the tax-payer funds and finance the mandatory pre-school programs, as well as some parents wishing to educate their young ones themselves. However, research has exhibited that those kids who get enrolled in the Head Start programs significantly benefit through the act of receiving formal education prior to going to kindergarten. In accordance to various studies, these children that are enrolled into such programs tend to have higher IQ scores and are more behaved when they are taken into kindergarten, than their counterparts who have no early formal education (Ludwig 8). Similarly, it has been established that these children that have attended Head Start programs are usually faster learners later in class, when compared to those ones that never got enrolled in those early learning programs.
According to Ludwig (9), what every person needs for them to be successful in life is established before their entry into the kindergarten. The study shows that it is during this period when the human brain is going through a rapid development. Moreover, the child at this stage is building his/her cognitive skills, which lays the foundation for reading, science, math, and academics as well as the social-emotional growth, character skills, executive functioning, and gross-motor skills. These factors comprise of all the child’s impulse control with regard to solving problems. Moreover, the National Association for the Education of Young Children, executive director, Rhian Evans Allvin, adds that during the initial five years of human life, there is an activity explosion which is more profound at that period than any other in their future (Magnuson, Ruhm & Waldfogel 39). It is therefore advisable to capitalize on this time and maximize the learning opportunities and support if an individual desires to stand a good chance of setting his/her child(ren) on a successful trajectory.
Academic achievement is also one of the major benefits that a child gets from the early childhood learning program. According to Magnuson, Ruhm, and Waldfogel (41), those children that attend early-learning programs learn to exercise their minds to learn when their brain is at its best development level to understand. This means that they are bound to demonstrate higher levels of achievement at school as their brains have developed the ability to capture the material presented in class by their teacher. Moreover, social adjustment of such kids that attended pre-kindergarten is at a high level when compared to those ones without formal early education. Their likelihood of repeating a grade or being placed in the classes offering special education is very minimal (Wasik et al. 1688). This is because the parent and the teacher can easily identify any learning problems at the early stage to mediate them in time. Moreover, according to the research that was carried by Rivera Miquela (62), kids that get formal early-learning experiences are highly more likely to graduate from high school.
There are numerous other benefits associated with the pre-kindergarten education that go far beyond academic prosperity. For instance, the National Institute for Early Education Research director, which is situated in New Brunswick, N.J., at Rutgers University, Steve Barnett, acknowledged that when the children do not get the formal early-learning experiences, the entire society is negatively affected, both socially and economically. He argued that parents and all the stakeholders pay for their failure to invest in their children in terms of the high costs associated with school failure (Rivera 63). This is because one in ten kids in middle-income families fail a grade and are required to repeat, and also one in ten never manage to complete high school. Such kids are bound to encounter the criminal justice system and/or the high costs prison system, as well as very poor productivity when/if they get employed (Ramey, Bryant & Suarez). Furthermore, evidence exists that show that people still pay for this failure in terms of high costs of health, as many problems associated with health are deeply rooted in the experiences of a child in their early childhood.
It is also important to acknowledge the significance of the early childhood education from the win-win perspective. Various experts have agreed that when an individual is offering support to the early childhood education, he/she is creating a win-win situation for everyone. They argue that is more than just a mere cliché, that the person will be investing in his/her own future, as the kids will grow up and start to pay for the social security of those people who supported their education (Magnuson, Ruhm & Waldfogel 42). Most importantly, the education creates the foundation on which the kids grow strong enough to become responsible individuals in society, who defend their country.
In the HighScope Perry Preschool Study, the researchers tracked the lives of more than a hundred young children who were born in poverty. They established that those kids from the disadvantaged communities and low-income families tend to gain more from the early education. The study was initiated in 1962 and started to track the participants from a tender age of either three, or four years old, who were divided into two groups. One group was given a high-quality preschool programming, while the other one was not (Ludwig & Phillips 8). By the time they reached 40 years, the group with the kids who attended preschool were getting very high earnings, were at a higher chance of getting employment, had generally committed very few crimes, and had most likely graduated from high school, when compared to their counterparts in the other group that never attended preschool.
Impacts Associated with Lack of Preschool Education
There are also those individuals that criticize pre-kindergarten education. They tend to claim that those differences between the children who have attended the pre-school programs and the ones that have not received any formal education can only be evident or rather felt during the kindergarten, first, and second grade. After this period, and the remainder of the school years, those kids that did not get a chance to attend formal educational programs before kindergarten perform at the same level and behave just the same way as their peers who were given pre-kindergarten formal education (Ludwig & Phillips 10). Therefore, in this context, it can be said that Head Start children are only given an added advantage over their peers for only a couple of years at the beginning of school, but later, the performance of their classmates become similar to theirs.
Another Issue presented by the critics concerning the Head Start programs is that the kids that are qualifying for such programs are the ones from families that live below the poverty line. This means that the Head Start programs are not readily available for the children coming from all backgrounds. However, it is possible for a child to receive formal pre-kindergarten education through other ways than Head Start programs (Love et al.). They can get educated through their parental teachings at the young age or from a daycare. Despite the fact that children undergoing the daycare programs are able to develop intellectually, they are bound to benefit the most when they stay at home with their parents, who educate them.
How Children Learn
In spite of our ever-increasing awareness of the benefits associated with early learning, and the negative consequences associated with ignoring it, high-quality pre-school education programs have not been mandated. This makes them very expensive and exclusive, making them out of reach of many Americans. This problem has made people resort to educating their children at home. Since the majority still feel that the government should never compel people to take their children to pre-kindergarten school, it is important for the parents and relevant stakeholders to understand how best their children learn (Gormley et al. 881). Most specialists in the field of childhood education state that young children tend to learn best when they are not being pushed too hard, when they get a chance to interact with their friends, and when they are kindly treated by their parents and instructors. Additionally, children tend to learn best when they are given instruction and educational activities in a small portion of the day. This part is highly applicable for the kids enrolled in pre-school programs as it is not advisable for the young children to be kept away from their parents for a long period of time (Belfield). Also, a child is not going to benefit when they have a teacher with no experience, or when he/she is in a huge classroom.
Regardless of the differences in opinions that people have about early childhood education, it is undoubtedly clear that children do benefit from getting some kind of education in the early years of their development. We can also conclude that the early years of education refer to the period between the birth of a child, and the time they are in kindergarten. Additionally, it is sound to conclude that there exist no uniform instructions that are fit for all children, as there are those kids who benefit the most from pre-school education, while others get the best from being educated at home. Furthermore, we can also state that most American parents and experts believe that kids benefit the most when they receive educational instruction at home, from their parent(s). From this analysis, we can conclude without any reasonable doubt that parents need to evaluate their child’s distinct personality before they establish the program that can best suit their child for the most important education in life.
Work Cited
Belfield, C. (2008). Unpublished analyses of enrollment in any type of center-based program for children who turned 4 (or 3) prior to September of the current school year using data from the NationalHousehold Survey of Education, 2005.
Camilli, G., Vargas, S., Ryan, S., & Barnett, W.S. (in press). Meta-analysis of the effects of early education interventions on cognitive and social development. Teachers College Record.
Gormley, W.T., Gayer, T., Phillips, D., & Dawson, B. (2005). The effects of universal pre-k on cognitive development. Developmental Psychology, 41(6), 872-884.
Love, J. M., Kisker, E. E., Ross, C. M., Schochet, P. Z., Brooks-Gunn, J., Paulsell, D., et al. (2002). Making a difference in the lives of infants and toddlers and their families: The impacts of Early Head Start. Volume I: Final technical report. Princeton, NJ: Mathematica Policy Research Inc.
Ludwig, J., & Phillips, D.A. (2008). Long term effects of Head Start on low-income children. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 40, 1-12.
Magnuson, K.A., Ruhm, C., & Waldfogel, J. (2007). Does prekindergarten improve school preparation and performance? Economics of Education Review, 26, 33-51.
Ramey, C.T., Bryant, D.M., & Suarez, T. M. (1985). Preschool compensatory education and the modifiability of intelligence: A critical review. In D. Detterman (Ed.) Current topics in human intelligence (pp.247-296). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Rivera, Miquela. "The Importance of Quality Early Childhood Education." Education Digest: Essential Readings Condensed for Quick Review, vol. 74, no. 3, 01 Nov. 2008, pp. 61-63.
