There was an article in the Friday, 22Oct99 _New York Times_, "Quality Day
Care, Early, Is Tied to Achievements as an Adult", reported by J. Wilgoren,
pA16.
The article discusses the finding of a positive correlation.
the study is called the "Abecedarian Project". the article says it's results
"will not be published until the spring".
one comment is necessary...
quoting from the article:
"While test scores were below average in both groups [subjects and controls]
and dropped over time, those in the child care program kept an edge of about 5
percentage points through age 21. The gap in I.Q., however, fell from about 17
points at age 3 to just 5 percentage points by age 21."
this occurs because the Childen 'migrated' from their Caring experiential
environments into what is the 'societal normal' experiential environment...
which just shows that 'society', in general needs to get serious about the
quality of our experiential environment.
do you see what i'm saying?
if we don't lift ourselves up =as a whole=, any efforts at lifting-up the
Children are, to a degree, controverted by the 'drag' of 'society' as a whole.
this is =not= to say that the early Childcare programs should not be pursued.
they should. 5% is better than nothing.
but why settle for 5% when, this study shows, that Caring can make a 17%
difference in 'I.Q.'?
if we only resolve to 'dig-in' to the work that can be accomplished,
Society-wide, we can hurry-along the benefits that would, otherwise, occur at a
significantly-slower pace.
what our Children can become, to the augmenting-benefit of Society, is not
totally-'pre-determined'... experience enables, if only we're willing to do the
work that providing such experience entails... if only we Care, and put our
Caring into action on behalf of the Children.
folks interested should contact Dr. Craig T. Ramey, Professor of Psychology,
Pediatrics and Neurobiology at U Alabama.
ken
