THE EARLY CATASTROPHE

Ewrite by Carl Peterson

 

 

In 1989 Carl Peterson started

the Peterson Reading and 555 programs

that provided auditory examples of key word lists,

then meaning phrases.

 

In 1993 he completed Peterson Reading 93

and the first 5 meaning phrase books.

 

In 1999 he completed

Peterson pronunciation deficits

and reading philosophies.

 

Peterson has written dozens

of Reading improvement articles since that time.

Peterson is frustrated by his inability

to get mothers more involved.

 

His free auditory software

can supplement the child’s word input

24 hours per day.

 

The following devastating report

does not have to happen

if the parents play Peterson’s  free recordings

for many or 24 hours per day.

 

The following copyrighted article is attached

to reinforce CP opinions.

Do not circulate without permission of the authors.

--------------------------------------

 

THE EARLY CATASTROPHE

THE 30 MILLION-WORD GAP BY AGE 3

 

BETTY HART AND TODD R. RISLEY

 

Families’
Language and Use Differ Across Income Groups

 

 

 

Families

 

 

 

13 Professional

23 Working-class

6 Welfare

Measures & Scores

Parent

Child

Parent

Child

Parent

Child

Protest scorea

41

 

31

 

14

 

Recorded vocabulary size

2,176

1,116

1,498

749

974

525

Average utterances per hourb

487

310

301

223

176

168

Average different words per hour

382

297

251

216

167

149

 

Simply in words heard,
the average child on welfare was having half as much experience per hour
(616 words per hour)
as the average working-class child
(1,251 words per hour)

and less than one-third that of the average child in a professional family

(2,153 words per hour).

-----------------------------------------------

 

During the 1960's War on Poverty,

we were among the many researchers,

psychologists,
and educators who brought our knowledge

of child development
to the front line in an optimistic effort
to intervene early
to forestall the terrible effects

that poverty was having

on some children’s academic growth.

We were also among the many

who saw that our results,
however promising at the start,
washed out fairly early and fairly completely

as children aged.

In one planned intervention

in Kansas City, Kans.,
we used our experience
with clinical language intervention
to design a half-day program
for the Turner House Preschool,
located in the impoverished
Juniper Gardens area

of the city.

Most interventions

of the time used a variety of methods

and then measured results
with IQ tests,
but ours focused on building

the everyday language

the children were using,
then evaluating the growth

of that language.

In addition,
our study included

not just poor children from Turner House,
but also a group

of University of Kansas

professors’ children

against whom we could measure

 the Turner House children’s progress.

All the children in the program

eagerly engaged
with the wide variety

of new materials and language-intensive activities

introduced in the preschool.

The spontaneous speech data

we collected showed a spurt

of new vocabulary words added
to the dictionaries of all the children

and an abrupt acceleration

in their cumulative vocabulary growth curves.

But just as in other

early intervention programs,
the increases were temporary.

We found we could easily increase

the size of the children’s vocabularies

by teaching them new words.

But we could not accelerate

the rate of vocabulary growth

so that it would continue

beyond direct teaching;
we could not change

the developmental trajectory.

However many new words

we taught the children

in the preschool,
it was clear that a year later,
when the children were in kindergarten,
the effects of the boost in vocabulary resources

would have washed out.

The children’s developmental trajectories

of vocabulary growth

would continue to point
to vocabulary sizes

in the future that were increasingly discrepant

from those of the professors’ children.

We saw increasing disparity

between the extremes—

the fast vocabulary growth

of the professors’ children and the slow vocabulary growth

of the Turner House children.

The gap seemed
to foreshadow the findings

from other studies

that in high school many children

from families in poverty

lack the vocabulary used

in advanced textbooks.

Rather than concede
to the unmalleable forces of heredity,
we decided that we would

undertake research

that would allow us
to understand the

disparate developmental trajectories we saw.

We realized that if we were
to understand

how and when differences

in developmental trajectories began,
we needed
to see what was happening
to children at home at the very beginning

of their vocabulary growth.

We undertook 2 1/2 years

of observing 42 families
for an hour each month
to learn about what typically

went on in homes
with 1- and 2-year-old children learning
to talk.

The data showed us that ordinary families

differ immensely

in the amount of experience
with language and interaction

they regularly provide their children

and that differences in children’s experience

are strongly linked
to children’s language accomplishments at age 3.

Our goal in the longitudinal study was
to discover what was happening

in children’s early experience

that could account
for the intractable difference in rates

of vocabulary growth we saw

among 4-year-olds.

Below box is inserted later in the article

a When we began the longitudinal study,
we asked the parents
to complete a vocabulary pretest.

At the first observation each parent was asked
to complete a form abstracted

from the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test
(PPVT).

We gave each parent a list of 46 vocabulary words

and a series of pictures
(four options per vocabulary word)
and asked the parent
to write beside each word the number

of the picture that corresponded
to the written word.

Parent performance on the test

was highly correlated
with years of education
(r = .57).

b Parent utterances and different words

were averaged over 13-36 months of child age.

Child utterances and different words

were averaged
for the four observations

when the children were 33-36 months old.


Methodology Our ambition was
to record
“everything”
that went on in children’s homes--everything that was done by the children,
to them,
and around them.

Because we were committed
to undertaking the labor involved in observing,
tape recording,
and transcribing,
and because we did not know exactly which aspects of children’s cumulative experience were contributing
to establishing rates of vocabulary growth,
the more information we could get each time we were in the home the more we could potentially learn.

We decided
to start when the children were 7-9 months old so we would have time
for the families
to adapt
to observation before the children actually began talking.

We followed the children until they turned three years old.

The first families we recruited
to participate in the study came from personal contacts:

friends who had babies and families who had had children in the Turner House Preschool.

We then used birth announcements
to send descriptions of the study
to families
with children of the desired age.

In recruiting from birth announcements,
we had two priorities.

The first priority was
to obtain a range in demographics,
and the second was stability--we needed families likely
to remain in the longitudinal study
for several years.

Recruiting from birth announcements allowed us
to preselect families.

We looked up each potential family in the city directory and listed those
with such signs of permanence as owning their home and having a telephone.

We listed families by sex of child and address because demographic status could be reliably associated
with area of residence in this city at that time.

Then we sent recruiting letters selectively in order
to maintain the gender balance and the representation of socioeconomic strata.

Our final sample consisted of 42 families who remained in the study from beginning
to end.

From each of these families,
we have almost 2 1/2 years or more of sequential monthly hour-long observations.

On the basis of occupation,
13 of the families were upper socioeconomic status
(SES),
10 were middle SES,
13 were lower SES,
and six were on welfare.

There were African-American families in each SES category,
in numbers roughly reflecting local job allocations.

One African-American family was upper SES,
three were middle,
seven were lower,
and six families were on welfare.

Of the 42 children,
17 were African American and 23 were girls.

Eleven children were the first born
to the family,
18 were second children,
and 13 were third or later-born children.

What We Found

Before children can take charge

of their own experience and begin
to spend time
with peers in social groups

outside the home,
almost everything they learn

comes from their families,
to whom society

has assigned the task of socializing children.

We were not surprised
to see the 42 children turn out
to be like their parents;
we had not fully realized,
however,
the implications of those similarities
for the children’s futures.

We observed the 42 children

grow more like their parents in stature and activity levels,
in vocabulary resources,
and in language and interaction styles.

Despite the considerable range

in vocabulary size among the children,
86 percent to 98 percent

of the words recorded in each child’s vocabulary

consisted of words also recorded in their parents’
vocabularies.

By the age of 34-36 months,
the children were also talking and using

numbers of different words

very similar
to the averages of their parents
(see the table above).

By the time the children were 3 years old,
trends in amount of talk,
vocabulary growth,
and style of interaction were well established and clearly suggested widening gaps
to come.

Even patterns of parenting were already observable among the children.

When we listened
to the children,
we seemed
to hear their parents speaking;
when we watched the children play at parenting their dolls,
we seemed
to see the futures of their own children.

We now had answers
to our 20-year-old questions.

We had observed,
recorded,
and analyzed more than 1,300 hours of casual interactions between parents and their language-learning children.

We had dissembled these interactions into several dozen molecular features that could be reliably coded and counted.

We had examined the correlations between the quantities of each of those features and several outcome measures relating
to children’s language accomplishments.

After all 1,318 observations had been entered into the computer and checked
for accuracy against the raw data,
after every word had been checked
for spelling and coded and checked
for its part of speech,
after every utterance had been coded
for syntax and discourse function and every code checked
for accuracy,
after random samples had been recoded
to check the reliability of the coding,
after each file had been checked one more time and the accuracy of each aspect verified,
and after the data analysis programs had finally been run
to produce frequency counts and dictionary lists
for each observation,
we had an immense numeric database that required 23 million bytes of computer file space.

We were finally ready
to begin asking what it all meant.

It took six years of painstaking effort before we saw the first results of the longitudinal research.
------------------------------------

And then we were astonished

at the differences the data revealed.

Like the children in the Turner House Preschool,
the three year old children

from families on welfare

not only had smaller vocabularies

than did children of the same age

in professional families,
but they were also adding words

more slowly.

Projecting the developmental trajectory

of the welfare children’s vocabulary growth curves,
we could see an ever-widening gap

similar to the one we saw

between the Turner House children and the professors’
children in 1967.

While we were immersed

in collecting and processing the data,
our thoughts were concerned only
with the next utterance
to be transcribed or coded.

While we were observing in the homes,
though we were aware

that the families were very different in lifestyles,
they were all similarly engaged

in the fundamental task of raising a child.

All the families nurtured their children

and played and talked with them.

They all disciplined their children and

taught them good manners and

how to dress and toilet themselves.

They provided their children
with much the same toys and talked
to them about much the same things.

Though different in personality and skill levels,
the children all learned
to talk and
to be socially appropriate members of the family
with all the basic skills needed
for preschool entry.

Test Performance in Third Grade

Follows Accomplishments at Age 3

 

We wondered whether the differences we saw at age 3 would be washed out,
like the effects

of a preschool intervention,
as the children’s experience broadened
to a wider community

of competent speakers.

Like the parents we observed,
we wondered how much difference

children’s early experiences would actually make.

Could we,
or parents,
predict how a child would do in school

from what the parent was doing

when the child was 2 years old?

Fortune provided us
with Dale Walker,
who recruited 29 of the 42 families
to participate in a study

of their children’s school performance

in the third grade,
when the children were nine
to 10 years old.

We were awestruck

at how well our measures of accomplishments

at age 3 predicted measures

of language skill at age 9-10.

From our preschool data

we had been confident

that the rate of vocabulary growth

would predict later performance in school;
we saw that it did.

For the 29 children

observed when they were 1-2 years old,
the rate of vocabulary growth at age 3

was strongly associated
with scores at age 9-10

on both the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised
(PPVT-R)
of receptive vocabulary
(r = .58)
and the Test of Language Development-2:

Intermediate
(TOLD)
(r = .74)
and its subtests
(listening,
speaking,
semantics,
syntax).

Vocabulary use at age 3

was equally predictive of measures

of language skill at age 9-10.

Vocabulary use at age 3 was strongly associated
with scores on both the PPVT-R
(r = .57)
and the TOLD
(r = .72).

Vocabulary use at age 3

was also strongly associated
with reading comprehension scores on the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills
(CTBS/U)
(r = .56).

The 30 Million Word Gap By Age 3

 

All parent-child research is based

on the assumption that the data
(laboratory or field)
reflect what people typically do.

In most studies,
there are as many reasons

that the averages

would be higher than reported as there are

that they would be lower.

But all researchers caution

against extrapolating their findings
to people and circumstances

they did not include.

Our data provide us,
however,
a first approximation
to the absolute magnitude

of children’s early experience,
a basis sufficient
for estimating the actual size of the intervention task needed
to provide equal experience and,
thus, equal opportunities
to children living in poverty.

We depend on future studies
to refine this estimate.

Because the goal of an intervention would be
to equalize children’s early experience,
we need
to estimate the amount of experience children

of different SES groups might bring
to an intervention

that began in preschool at age 4.

We base our estimate

on the remarkable differences

our data showed in the relative amounts

of children’s early experience:

Simply in words heard,
the average child on welfare was having half as much experience per hour
(616 words per hour)
as the average working-class child
(1,251 words per hour)
and less than one-third that of the average child in a professional family
(2,153 words per hour).

These relative differences in amount of experience were so durable over the more than two years of observations that they provide the best basis we currently have
for estimating children’s actual life experience.

A linear extrapolation from the averages in the observational data
to a 100-hour week
(given a 14-hour waking day)
shows the average child in the professional families
with 215,000 words of language experience,
the average child in a working-class family provided
with 125,000 words,
and the average child in a welfare family
with 62,000 words of language experience.

In a 5,200-hour year,
the amount would be 11.2 million words
for a child in a professional family,
6.5 million words
for a child in a working-class family,
and 3.2 million words
for a child in a welfare family.

In four years of such experience,
an average child in a professional family

would have accumulated experience
with almost 45 million words,
an average child in a working-class family

would have accumulated experience
with 26 million words,
and an average child in a welfare family

would have accumulated experience
with 13 million words.

By age 4,
the average child in a welfare family might have

13 million fewer words of cumulative experience

than the average child in a working-class family.

But the children’s language experience did not differ

just in terms of the number and quality of words heard.
----------------------------------------------------

 

(CARL’S CRITICISM OF CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM


We can extrapolate similarly

the relative differences the data showed

in children’s hourly experience
with parent affirmatives
(encouraging words)
and prohibitions.

The average child in a professional family

was accumulating

32 affirmatives and five prohibitions per hour,
a ratio of 6 encouragements
to 1 discouragement.

The average child in a working-class family

was accumulating

12 affirmatives and seven prohibitions per hour,
a ratio of 2 encouragements
to 1 discouragement.

The average child in a welfare family,
was accumulating

five affirmatives and 11 prohibitions per hour,
a ratio of 1 encouragement
to 2 discouragements.

In a 5,200-hour year,
that would be 166,000 encouragements
to 26,000 discouragements in a professional family,
62,000 encouragements
to 36,000 discouragements in a working-class family,
and 26,000 encouragements
to 57,000 discouragements in a welfare family.

Extrapolated
to the first four years of life,
the average child in a professional family

would have accumulated

560,000 more instances of encouraging feedback

than discouraging feedback,
and an average child

in a working-class family

would have accumulated

100,000 more encouragements

than discouragements.

But an average child in a welfare family

would have accumulated

125,000 more instances of prohibitions

than encouragements.

By the age of 4,
the average child in a welfare family

might have had 144,000 fewer encouragements

and 84,000 more discouragements

of his or her behavior

than the average child in a working-class family.

Extrapolating the relative differences

in children’s hourly experience

allows us to estimate

children’s cumulative experience

in the first four years of life

and so glimpse the size

of the problem facing intervention.

Whatever the inaccuracy

of our estimates,
it is not by an order of magnitude

such that 60,000 words becomes 6,000 or 600,000.

Even if our estimates

of children’s experience

are too high by half,
the differences between children

by age 4 in amounts of cumulative experience

are so great

that even the best of intervention programs

could only hope
to keep the children in families on welfare

from falling still further behind

the children in the working-class families.
---------------------------------


The Importance of Early Years Experience

We learned from the longitudinal data

that the problem of skill differences among children

at the time of school entry is bigger,
more intractable,
and more important than we had thought.

So much is happening to children

during their first three years at home,
at a time when they are especially malleable

and uniquely dependent on the family
for virtually all their experience,
that by age 3,
an intervention must address

not just a lack of knowledge or skill,
but an entire general approach
to experience.

Cognitively,
experience is sequential:

Experiences in infancy

establish habits of seeking,
noticing, and incorporating

new and more complex experiences,
as well as schemas
for categorizing and thinking about experiences.

Neurologically,
infancy is a critical period

because cortical development

is influenced by the amount

of central nervous system activity

stimulated by experience.

Behaviorally, infancy

is a unique time of helplessness

when nearly all of children’s experience

is mediated by adults

in one-to-one interactions permeated
with affect.

Once children become independent

and can speak for themselves,
they gain access
to more opportunities
for experience.

But the amount and diversity

of children’s past experience

influences which new opportunities
for experience they notice and choose.

Estimating, as we did,
the magnitude of the differences

in children’s cumulative experience

before the age of 3

gives an indication

of how big the problem is.

Estimating the hours

of intervention needed
to equalize children’s early experience

makes clear the enormity

of the effort that would be required
to change children’s lives.

And the longer the effort is put off,
the less possible the change becomes.

We see why our brief,
intense efforts during the War on Poverty

did not succeed.

But we also see the risk
to our nation and its children

that makes intervention

more urgent than ever.
--------------------------------------------------

 

 WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

HOW TO BUILDING A MOVEMENT

ON BEHALF OF YOUNG CHILDREN.

BY VALORA
WASHINGTON ISSUE DATE:

11.02.04
An important reason why quality early education and care is not universally available in America is because the public is not demanding it.

Many of the people most affected by current supports
for young children are not engaged in the conversation about it,
and some natural allies feel ignored.

Many parents scramble
for care when they need it,
but often leave that developmental period
with a survivor’s sense of relief,
unaware of how they might work
to alter the fragmented,
incoherent experience.

Yes,
polls indicate that the general public supports early education -- but,
overall,
the public is not yet activated
to do anything
to actually achieve it or
to pay
for it.

Ironically,
in the cycles of history,
we have come
to a place where our nation simultaneously embraces and neglects the young child,
offering almost enough care
to address basic needs but not enough resources
to ensure quality early education
for all.

Excellent innovations prevail,
but a system of care lies just beyond our reach.

Indeed,
the field of early care and education is at a crossroads,
where the hoped-for remedy is not a national framework of care but the evolution of 50 unique state solutions.

At times,
advocates of greater care and education experience vigorous endorsement from business,
philanthropy,
and the media,
and even increased fiscal commitments.

The benefits
for children are consistently demonstrated and well-documented.

Fervent opposition appears
to wane.

But demand
for services invariably exceeds supply.

And efforts
to create change
for young children confront the
“soft bigotry”
inherent in the persistence of custodial care,
the abandonment of a federal strategy,
and insufficient funding at all levels of government.

Without question,
as a nation,
we
“know”
so much more than we are prepared to
“do”
for young children.

There is no shortage of courageous,
strategic,
and smart initiatives.

North Carolina,
New Jersey,
Georgia,
and
Oklahoma are home
to inspired examples of what might be possible
for all children given a convergence of factors,
including determined leadership,
sweat equity,
and community organizing.

In these states,
Head Start,
a federal-community partnership,
continues
to play a vital role in bringing education,
health care,
and social services
to our most vulnerable families.

And,
everywhere across
America,
individual demonstration programs illustrate the creative genius of early educators.

These are all essential,
vital initiatives that can convert people,
communities,
and dollars to
“the children’s cause.”

While celebrating decades of program innovations,
research corroboration,
and sustained advocacy,
we might ask ourselves:

Why does the promise of quality,
accessible early education and care
for all families who want it remain elusive?

How do we redress the reality that too many programs are mediocre and characterized by high staff turnover,
inadequate teacher compensation,
and family access frequently subordinated
to policy goals such as welfare reform?

Where do we go from here?

Essential strategies must include:

Leadership.

Leaders must rally broad constituencies and be unafraid
to re-examine difficult issues of professional and program standards and qualifications.

Linkages.

We must sustain ongoing efforts
to strengthen,
motivate,
activate,
and leverage partnerships
with peer organizations and with
“grass tops”
-- that is,
executive leaders in corporate,
foundation,
and policy arenas -- as well as grass roots.

Litigation.

Sometimes,
as most notably in
New Jersey,
court strategies advance educational equity
for young children.

Legislation.

We need
to pursue coalitions and opportunities at all levels of government.

But the most important missing link is a true movement on behalf of young children.

As a top priority,
communities of color must be more effectively engaged as leaders and allies in early-childhood-advocacy movements.

This strategy has proven effective in the past:

At its best,
Head Start galvanizes community trust and passion.

It is widely acknowledged that its community and parent support help explain why Head Start has survived and thrived even as other war-on-poverty programs were defunded.

Given the demographic realities in the
United States,
sheer numbers alone demonstrate how important these communities can be
to efforts
to build public will
for change.

Because publicly financed programs typically target low-income populations,
they disproportionately affect children of color.

Beyond demographics,
as a social principle,
those most affected by a policy must own the process of change.

Equally important,
early educators who are members of communities of color must be architects of change
for young children.

“Acknowledged”
leadership in the field of early education includes a greater proportion of males,
whites,
and associates of universities than constitutes the larger early-childhood workforce.

Preschool teachers,
like those in public schools,
have less diversity than the children they teach.

Virtually all
(98 percent)
of today’s child-care providers are women,
a third of them women of color.

Moreover,
many professionals of color have expressed a sense of isolation and marginalization in policy discussions about children,
lamenting that other leaders often
“plan”
and design changes
for them without their input or advice.

These inequities are bad
for children,
programs,
and policy.

Such issues
for communities and professionals of color are illustrative of the field’s need
to better define itself in the minds of the general public.

Searching
for our own identity,
we early educators have too often devoted great energy
to our internal struggles and differences of opinion.

Ultimately,
though,
real change will be dependent upon factors such as an organized and mobilized public,
resulting from:

how effectively we enroll external constituencies;
how well we generate and embrace shared ownership of our issues
with others;
the capacity
to engage many generations
(teens and elders)
and family types
(those not rearing children);
“evidence”
evoked through stories that are memorable and interesting
to laypeople;
“proof”
gathered from peoples’
observations of their lives and the lives of those around them;
critical public consciousness that change is both necessary and desirable;
and public dialogue,
debate,
and discourse.

Mobilizing greater public support and involvement is possible because of the legacy derived from decades of relentless effort in early care and education:

Early education is validated as an investment strategy yielding dividends
for both the individual and
for our society.

Opinion leaders are convinced that early education is a
“social good.”

The data,
without exception,
speak
to the impact of early care and education on early learning,
high-school graduation,
and even on later homeownership among participants.

But even greater outcomes might be anticipated -- namely,
the practice of democracy and the communication of clear social and cultural norms about what we value
for our children.

It will take a social movement
to establish these fundamental connections between early education and our national values,
beliefs,
and commitments.

At this crossroads,
we can shift the paradigm from simply nurturing the at-risk child
to promoting the best qualities within us all.

Goodwill and good work have forged a pathway that makes movement building possible.

 

American Prospect Online - Starting Young Where Do We Go From Here?

 

Howto building a movement on behalf of young children.

By Valora
Washington Dream On Jason DeParle is a modern biographer of the American dreamers.

By
Dalton Conley Raising the Bar We need
to reward better-trained child-care and preschool teachers.

By Joan Fitzgerald and Daphne Hunt Shaping the Brains of Tomorrow What developmental science teaches about the importance of investing early in children.

By Ross A. Thompson

 

Table of Contents

 

November 2004 Special Report:

STARTING YOUNG The case
for investing in early childhood This special report of The American Prospect is dedicated
to the memory of Irving B.

Harris -- friend,
visionary,
and inspired champion of
America's children.

We gratefully acknowledge the Schott Foundation
for Public Education
for co-sponsorship of this report.

For more resources on this topic,
visit the Moving Ideas website.

Moving Ideas is a project of The American Prospect.

Keeping Faith
with Our Children Why early-childhood education is the best investment we can make By Edward M.

Kennedy Past,
Present,
and Future What we can learn from the history of preschool education By Barbara Beatty You're Doing Fine,
Oklahoma! The universal pre-K movement takes off in unlikely places.

By David L.

Kirp Leave No Parent Behind The best child-development programs involve parents,
too.

By Dick Mendel Head Start Under Assault The administration's misguided plan could dismantle a cherished program.

By Helen Blank Too Young
to Test Why we need a better means of evaluating young children By Richard Rothstein Starting Right Building on proven strategies
for babies and toddlers By Joan Lombardi Shaping the Brains of Tomorrow What developmental science teaches By Ross A.

Thompson Raising the Bar How
to reward better-trained early educators By Joan Fitzgerald and Daphne Hunt The European Model How other nations support families that work By Marcia K.

Meyers and Janet C.

Gornick Where Do We Go From Here Building a movement on behalf of young children By Valora Washington Special Reports Starting Young Human Rights Bridging the Two Americas All Special Reports Moving Ideas The Next Four Years:

A political forecast of the directions and implications of a second Bush administration.

From Interhemispheric
Resource Center.

 

Shaping the Brains of Tomorrow What developmental science teaches about the importance of investing early in children.

 

By Ross A. Thompson Issue Date:

11.02.04 What would happen if the best minds in the country concluded that investments in early-childhood development are necessary and cost-effective?

That the early years present an opportunity,
unequaled later in life,
to enhance inborn potential and avert harm?

What if they could identify the
“active ingredients”
of healthy psychological development,
and how
to enhance these in young children growing up in deprived conditions?

Wouldn’t society become mobilized
to do its best
for young children?

We are in this situation today,
and the arguments
for investing in early-childhood development are scientific,
not political.

As the result of several blue-ribbon studies of the forces shaping young children’s growth,
developmental scientists today agree on some basic conclusions:

The early years are important.

Early relationships matter.

All children are born ready
to learn,
both intellectually and socially.

Even in infancy,
children are active participants in their own development,
together
with the adults who care
for them.

Early experience can elucidate,
or diminish,
inborn potential.

The early years are a period of considerable opportunity
for growth and vulnerability
to harm.

What we do
with this knowledge will shape the lives of the next generation.

Development in the Early Years Developmental psychologists and neurobiologists agree that the developing mind is astonishingly active and self-organizing,
creating new knowledge from everyday experiences.

Newborns crave novelty and become bored
with familiarity,
so their eyes,
ears,
and other sensory organs are attuned
to events from which they can learn.

A few months later,
the infant mentally clusters objects together that are similar in shape,
texture,
or density,
and explores gravity and causality as crackers are dropped from the high chair.

A toddler categorizes faces,
animals,
and birds according
to their properties,
and by age 3 or 4,
children make logical inferences about new members of a group,
such as appreciating that a dolphin breathes like the mammal it is rather than the fish it resembles.

Just as the developing brain is expanding its interconnections,
the developing mind is making connections between the new knowledge it discovers and creates.

The remarkable intellectual accomplishments of the early years extend
to language development.

Newborns have an innate capacity
to differentiate speech sounds that are used in all the world’s languages,
even those they have never heard and which their parents cannot discriminate.

But later in the first year they lose this ability as they become perceptually attuned
to the language they will learn.

By age 3,
a child is forming simple sentences,
mastering grammar,
and experiencing a
“vocabulary explosion”
that will result,
by age 6,
in a lexicon of more than 10,000 words.

Equally important,
language will enable the child
to put developing ideas and concepts into words that he or she can share
with another,
revolutionizing his or her thought by gaining access
to the concepts,
ideas,
and values of others.

Sensitive caregiving -- not educational toys or Mozart CDs -- provides the most essential catalysts
for these feats of intellectual growth.

People are critical
to the development of the mind:

Newborns attend in a special way
to human faces and voices,
toddlers learn new words based on their interest in the intentions of adult speakers,
and memory develops through the shared recounting of everyday events.

Relationships stimulate the mind and provide the emotional incentives
to new learning as young children share their discoveries
with another.

This is why promoting school readiness is not simply a matter of encouraging literacy and number skills.

It must also ensure the secure,
unhurried,
focused attention from sensitive caregivers that contributes
to the growth of curiosity,
the eagerness
to discover,
self-confidence,
and cooperation.

Healthy brain development relies on people
to provide the stimulation that organizes connections in the cortex
for language and complex thought.

It also relies on people
to protect the baby from overwhelming stress,
manage the child’s emotions,
and promote security.

This is why strong attachments between infants and their caregivers are as biologically basic as learning
to crawl and walk.

Throughout evolution,
attachment relationships have ensured human survival by keeping infants protected and nurtured.

By their first birthday,
infants have developed deep attachments
to those who care
for them.

And these attachments,
in turn,
provide a foundation
for positive relationships
with peers and teachers,
healthy self-concept,
and emotional and moral understanding.

In the absence of nurturing relationships,
things can go wrong.

It isn’t surprising
to find that insecure attachments develop more frequently in homes where parents are stressed or depressed,
or in chaotic child-care settings.

Even more disturbing is research demonstrating how early children show signs of depression,
conduct problems,
social withdrawal,
and anxiety disorders,
and how closely these problems are tied
to the quality of the parent-child relationship.

These studies show that relationships
with caregivers who are neglectful,
physically abusive,
or emotionally troubled can predispose young children
to psychopathology.

So the importance of these earliest relationships is a double-edged sword:

Sensitive caregiving underpins healthy development,
while markedly inadequate care renders young children vulnerable
to harm.

Relationships also influence the growth of social and emotional understanding.

Far from being egocentric,
young children are fascinated by what goes on in others’
minds,
and social experiences are the laboratory in which these discoveries emerge.

A 2-year-old whose hand inches closer
to the forbidden VCR while carefully watching her parent’s face,
for example,
is testing the adult’s expected reaction.

And a 3-year-old whose roughhousing has resulted in a crying younger sibling learns from an adult about the connections between exuberant running and inadvertent collisions,
enhancing his or her emotional understanding and empathy.

From Mind
to Brain -- and Back Again Whether we are concerned
with the growth of the mind or the person,
all of these remarkable early achievements take place in the developing brain.

Brain development begins within the first month after conception,
and by the sixth prenatal month,
nearly all of the billions of neurons that populate the mature brain have been created.

This means that the quality of prenatal care,
particularly the mother’s nutrition,
health,
and exposure
to dangerous viruses and drugs,
can have a profound effect on the developing brain of her fetus.

Health,
nutrition,
and drug exposure continue
to influence brain development after birth.

Both before and after birth,
there is an initial
“blooming”
of connections between neurons,
creating a brain densely packed
with many more neural pathways than it needs.

This proliferation is followed by a period of
“pruning”
in which little-used connections gradually erode
to reach the number required
for optimal efficiency.

Experience is the central determinant of which neural pathways are retained or disappear.

The early experiences that sculpt the developing brain can be stimulating or neglectful,
supportive or traumatic,
secure or stressful.

Through a
“use it or lose it”
principle,
those neurons that aren’t activated through experience progressively wither.

Language exposure,
for example,
helps
to account
for the transition from the newborn’s capacity
to perceive universal speech sounds
to the 1-year-old’s language-specific speech perception.

Developmental neuroscientists offer similar accounts
to explain the early development of vision,
memory ability,
early categorization and thinking skills,
and emotional development.

Brain development is an extended process -- not limited
to a narrow
“window of opportunity”
between zero and three,
as conventional wisdom sometimes suggests.

Neural connections in areas of the brain guiding higher forms of thinking and reasoning grow and atrophy into early adolescence,
for example,
and the adult brain even creates new neurons in certain regions governing memory.

Brain architecture continues
to be subtly refined throughout life in ways that reflect the individualized,
everyday experiences of the person.

The brain of a musician who plays a stringed instrument,
for example,
differs from the brain of a poet who works
with words and abstract ideas because they have exercised different brain regions throughout life.

Despite these exciting discoveries,
neuroscientists are still at the early stages of understanding how experience refines the brain.

They are concerned
with how early deprivation
(such as that experienced by orphans from
Romania and the former Soviet Union),
abuse,
and trauma influence early brain growth,
and whether these effects can be altered.

They are also studying how relational problems,
such as the challenges faced by an infant of a depressed mother,
influence brain development.

Investing in Young Children These and other conclusions from a landmark study of the National Academy of Sciences,
From Neurons
to Neighborhoods:

The Science of Early Childhood Development,
underscore the importance of early experiences
for development throughout life.

What about children,
then,
who live in deprived or high-risk conditions?

Considerable research shows that many of them will lag intellectually from infancy and will suffer deficiencies in various facets of healthy psychological development.

Poverty significantly compromises healthy intellectual and socioemotional development,
for example,
and poverty during early childhood is more powerfully predictive of later achievement than is poverty at any later stage.

The reasons include stressed caregivers,
troubled parent-child relationships,
dangerous neighborhoods,
and inadequate schools and community supports.

Can early interventions improve the odds of healthy development
for children at risk?

The answer offered by the committee of scientists that wrote From Neurons
to Neighborhoods is both optimistic and challenging.

The good news is that there are successful strategies,
especially programs that emphasize child-focused educational activities and parent-child interaction,
and are governed by specific practices matched
to clear goals.

But the most effective interventions are rarely simple,
inexpensive,
or easy
to implement.

Changing the developmental trajectory of a young child growing up in deprived circumstances requires determination,
persistence,
and patience.

Are such interventions cost-effective?

Determining the cost-effectiveness of programs
for at-risk young children requires putting price tags on the innumerable human consequences of early deprivation.

Yet several studies of comprehensive early-intervention efforts have found that program costs are more than compensated by averted costs of educational remediation,
juvenile or adult crime,
and diminished job earnings.

While expensive,
large-scale public efforts have been skeptically regarded by policy-makers most concerned about their costs,
important new voices are emerging in support of these investments.

One is that of James Heckman,
Nobel laureate and
University of Chicago economist,
who argues that the varied benefits of early-childhood interventions -- in cognitive learning,
motivation,
and socialization -- are likely
to have long-term advantages in the labor market because of the cumulative effects of early improvements in ability.

Another is that of Art Rolnick of the Federal Reserve Bank in
Minneapolis,
who
(along
with colleague Rob Grunewald)
estimates that public investments in programs
to assist poor children yield a 16-percent real rate of return.

This,
he argues,
compares very favorably
to other public investments
with more popular appeal,
such as building sports coliseums,
which typically have little or no return on public investment.

Although much more research is needed,
it appears that society’s investment in improving the chances
for young children at risk is economically worthwhile.

The views of economists like these shift the debate about public efforts
to support healthy early development.

And they join the chorus of scientists whose work has consistently shown how much early-childhood experiences and relationships matter.

It is now reasonable
to ask why public policy lags so significantly behind the science and economics of early-childhood development.

The public policies that would support healthy early-childhood development are child-friendly and family-friendly.

They include:

- child-care policies that ensure widespread access
to affordable,
high-quality child care;
- welfare-reform policies that enable parents
to integrate work and family responsibilities constructively in children’s interests;
- prenatal and postnatal health care that screens children
for developmental difficulties before they become severe,
guarantees adequate nutrition,
provides early visual and auditory screening,
and protects young children from debilitating diseases and hazardous exposure
to environmental toxins.

In the end,
because children are society’s most valuable asset,
they are also a social responsibility and investment.

Because the science of early-childhood development converges
with the economics of public policy
to confirm that investments in early-childhood development are both necessary and worthwhile,
it is long past time
for society
to catch up.

----------------------------------------------

 

 

HOMELESSNESS:

EXAMPLE PAPER SOCIOLOGY 498

Homelessness Example of term paper Why Economic Factors Do NOT Cause Homelessness:

A Look at the Evidence Common sense may lead the casual observer
to the conclusion that the cause of homelessness is primarily economic.

The bulk of the evidence shows,
as I argue here,
that economic causes alone cannot explain trends in homelessness.

While it may work better at the micro level - predicting who,
namely the very poor,
will become homeless,
economic factors do not cause homelessness
(or explain which cities or years are more likely
to have high levels of homelessness).

Elliot Liebow's participant observation study gave detailed analyses of the backgrounds of individual homeless women,
hoping
to get at the cause by examining individuals personally.

Several in-depth case studies did reveal that economic problems had plagued some women their whole lives.

Women such as Carlotta,
Jeannette,
Betty,
and
Regina talked about their lower class backgrounds and the inability
to rise above this.

Now these women are homeless.

But there were other homeless women who did not suffer specifically from economic troubles.

Abigail and Judy,
for instance,
became homeless because
(among other reasons)
they did not want
to live under their families’
rules.

So,
while some homeless people do suffer from economic difficulties,
not all of them do.

Additionally,
there are certainly people who have faced similar hardships and are not homeless.

Liebow would not support an explanation of homelessness that relied primarily on economic factors.

Another piece of evidence offered by Liebow is that employment is not a way out of homelessness.

While the life experiences of the women studied were diverse,
and their reasons
for working
(or not working)
varied,
very few of the women escaped homelessness by way of employment.

Liebow found that the people he studied
“almost always identify themselves as working,
as looking
for work,
or as one who would work if she could”
(p.

52).

While many of the women believed that employment would provide an escape from their situation,
once they confronted the facts,
they almost always found this
to be untrue.

There is at least one weakness
with this evidence.

Liebow studied only women at a handful of shelters in the DC area.

Perhaps the situation is different
for the homeless in other
US metropolitan areas.

Or,
perhaps the situation is different
for men.

If this were the case,
coupled
with the fact that the vast majority of the homeless are men,
Liebow's evidence does not explain why joblessness is not a cause of homelessness.

Still,
I believe Liebow's evidence is indicative of a larger pattern.

The women he studied came from diverse backgrounds,
yet their detailed experiences all showed the same pattern:

women work,
but cannot climb out of homelessness.

Peter Rossi's survey of the
Chicago homeless showed a similar pattern:

The
Chicago homeless were just as likely
to be working as the extremely poor.

His conclusion from this evidence is that,
while not working differentiates the poor from the non-poor,
it does not differentiate between the homeless and the domiciled.

Rossi actually begins his book by saying that extreme poverty is the cause of homelessness.

But as he reviews the evidence,
he becomes less convinced that this is a cause and eventually abandons it.

He explains the relationship by saying
“it goes without saying that the homeless are extremely poor.”

Predicting which of the poor will become homeless is due
to other non-economic factors.

Moving from his initial theory,
Rossi figures that he will find the cause
(or causes)
of homelessness by comparing three groups:

the homeless,
the extremely poor,
and the general population.

By comparing these groups on the distribution of various demographic characteristics,
he should be able
to tell what distinguishes the general population from the poor and the poor from the homeless.

He should expect
to find patterns of these characteristics like the one below if economic factors contributed
to the likelihood of becoming homeless:

homeless < poor < general population This fits
for some characteristics such as marital status,
where the homeless are less likely
to be married than the poor who are less likely
to be married than the general population.

But this does not fit most other characteristics
(such as gender,
joblessness,
or income).

Perhaps the most convincing piece of Rossi's evidence against economics as a cause of homelessness is the income comparison.

While he did find that people living in SROs have higher incomes than the homeless,
the extremely poor make substantially less
($58/month)
than the homeless
($168/month).

There is a problem
with this piece of information.

That is,
how can anyone afford a home in addition
to other necessities on less than sixty dollars each month?

Jencks claims that people must be underreporting their income,
perhaps because they are receiving money illegally.

If this is the case,
then who is
to say that the homeless,
or anyone
for that matter,
isn't underreporting their income as well?

We do not know
for certain;
we can only speculate.

Another fact
to consider is that many of the extremely poor are receiving food stamps,
housing subsidies,
free health care or other forms of welfare.

These types of income may not have counted towards
“income”
as it is defined here.

Rossi offers one piece of macro evidence that,
at first,
seems
to support the economic theory.

He notes that during W.W.II,
there were low levels of homelessness.

But this changed as the baby boom cohort shifted into working ages.

This shift caused the earnings level
to drop and unemployment
to rise.

At the same time homelessness rose.

While these patterns fit this explanation,
they do not follow through
for more recent trends.

As the baby boom cohort leaves the working ages,
we would expect homelessness
to decrease.

This has not occurred.

The question now may be:

How good is Rossi's evidence?

His evaluation of the methodology used
for this survey was extensive.

He reviewed the various possible ways
to enumerate the homeless in order
to show that his method is best.

In fact,
it is random and therefore
“scientifically”
sound.

The difficulty
with his measurement was in finding all of the street homeless,
but he seemed
to do a good job of this.

Perhaps the only fault lies in his enumeration of only one city
(
Chicago),
which may not be representative of all
US homeless.

Brendan O'Flaherty does not feel that Rossi's measurement was appropriate.

In examining income,
Rossi looked at individuals.

O'Flaherty asserts that the more appropriate unit of analysis is the household,
because it is the family that is responsible
for paying rent.

Resources and expenses are shared between members.

This logic seems contradictory at first when we consider that the vast majority of the homeless are single men:

So why examine households?

O'Flaherty finds that Rossi's unit of analysis does not hold up at the macro level.

In fact,
"the number of low-income individuals increased the most in regions where homelessness is least concentrated
(p.

150).

So what does O'Flaherty's research show?

Using McKinley
Blackburn's nation-wide data on poverty,
he finds
“no great rise in the proportion of severely poor households”
(p.

149).

Although he gives no hard numbers,
he is careful
to mention potential problems
with the data.

He says that,
if anything,
the population of low- income households may show a slight upward trend.

He attributes this
to a change in the way
“household”
was redefined between 1979 and 1989,
where the more recent definition is more inclusive.

His own data on three
US cities shows some variation in household poverty,
but this variation is not positively correlated
with homelessness rates.

Family poverty rose in each of the three cities between 1970 and 1980;
family homelessness did not increase during this time.

In
New York and Newark,
family poverty decreased between 1980 and 1990,
while family homelessness increased
(Table 7-2).

This exemplifies O'Flaherty's stance against economics as a significant cause of homelessness.

There is one other problem
to recognize in O'Flaherty's data.

Most of his data is based on a comparison of only a handful of cities over time.

From this,
we are not sure if the statistics are representative of all cities.

Martha Burt might seem
to rectify this problem by offering a comparison across 147
US cities on a variety of characteristics
to test their relationship
with rates of homelessness.

The variable that we would be most anxious
to observe in examining
“economics”
as a cause of homelessness,
is the proportion of the city's population living in poverty.

In fact,
there is zero correlation between this variable and rates of homelessness.

Cities such as
New Orleans,
Detroit,
and
Cleveland
with the highest poverty rates have low homelessness rates and cities such as DC and
San Francisco,
which have high homelessness,
have some of the lowest poverty rates.

While this seems like strong evidence,
we must consider possible faults
with the methodology.

Burt collected her numbers on homelessness by asking shelters how many beds they have.

If some beds went unused,
she will overcount homelessness.

Second,
she did not deal
with people sleeping in the streets;
instead,
she assumed a constant ratio.

So,
for cities
with a larger than expected percentage of homeless in shelters,
they will appear on Burt's measure
to have less homelessness than they actually do.

Also,
some areas may just be better at providing shelters.

Cities do not always build shelters according
to need,
but by budget.

In this case,
cities who build plenty of shelters
(particularly richer cities)
will appear
to have higher rates of homelessness than may actually be the case.

O'Flaherty has a critique of Burt's homelessness rates as well.

Believing that her 1989 survey results should reflect those of the 1990 Census counts,
he loses confidence when finding that
“they are grotesquely different”
(p.

167).

While both her data and the Census may have flaws,
I disagree
with O'Flaherty that they are strikingly different.

In fact,
the two sets of numbers show very similar trends
(O'Flaherty,
Table 9-1).

Burt's data,
when compared
to the Census data,
shows at least some sign of reliability.

Christopher Jencks relies on Burt's data in part
to look at trends in homelessness over time,
so any problems associated
with methodology should also be considered in evaluating his conclusions.

Jencks evaluates Burt's evidence and finds characteristics that describe the greatest proportion of the homeless.

From this,
he defines those most likely
to become homeless as single men,
between age 21 and 64,
with no earnings and extremely low personal income
(below $2500 annually).

In comparing the trends between 1969
to 1989,
Jencks concludes that the increase was negligible - certainly not significant enough
to explain the rise in homelessness.

In fact the percent of the population most vulnerable
to homelessness
(as defined by Jencks)
doubled over this time period,
from 1.2
to 2.4%
(Table 5).

While Jencks does not take this particular argument at face value,
he does not abandon the economic explanation.

In fact,
he is the only of these five researchers who believes that this argument holds some promise.

The way he reconciles the last piece of data is
to say that the odds that the economically-vulnerable population became homeless rose - not the proportion of this population.

He also attributes the increase in propensity toward homelessness
to various non-economic factors,
such as drug abuse,
increase in rents,
deinstitutionalization,
and the decline in marriage.

So while Jencks has faith in the economic theory,
he recognizes that other factors are contributing
to an increase in homelessness,
particularly during the late 1980s.

But why then,
if homelessness is a function of poverty,
as Jencks claims,
was there such little homelessness in the 1950s?

Poverty rates were much higher then than they were in the 1980s.

While this seems like more evidence against this theory,
there is a way of resolving this.

Poverty rates had been very high just prior
to the 1950s
(the earliest time
for which we have data).

During the 50s,
poverty was steadily decreasing,
while in the 80s,
poverty was rising.

This may help us salvage the economic explanation in spite of this earlier data.

After reviewing the literature on homelessness,
there seems
to be some overriding consensus among researchers in the field.

That is,
there is more
to homelessness that strictly factors related
to income,
wealth,
and the job market.

Still,
economic factors cannot be ignored.

The richest people in society will never be forced into homelessness.

On the other hand,
not all extremely poor people will become homeless.

Other factors determine who may face being without a home and public policy must take this into account.

Where does a public policy recommendation
for the alleviation of homelessness lead
to once it decides that economic factors do not contribute
to this problem?

I believe that the economic explanation is unique in that,
just because it is not a significant cause of homelessness,
does not mean that it should not be part of a policy's focus.

While some data shows that the homeless are,
on average,
earning more than the extremely poor,
they still suffer from economic probleMs. A monthly income around $100
(in 1989 dollars)
is difficult
to live on.

It is interesting
to note that,
with the exception of Liebow who focuses public policy recommendations specifically on housing subsidies,
the other three authors offer solutions that are based in economics.

Increasing cash benefits
to the poor and various suggestions
to improve the labor market are the some of the major themes touched on.

Perhaps the reason
for this is best explained by O'Flaherty,
when he says that
“the question becomes how
to cope
with an environment where substantial numbers of people have a hard time keeping a conventional roof over their heads”
(p.

277).

After looking at all of these numbers,
statistics,
and mathematical models,
the authors remember that it is people they are studying and that these people are living in undesirable conditions.

For a humanist,
the natural reaction is
to alleviate the problem quickly.

And additional income cannot hurt.

But O'Flaherty,
Rossi,
and Jencks are careful
to note that we must offer these benefits
to the non-homeless as well
to prevent the perverse incentive of encouraging people
to become homeless in order
to make economic gains.

The success of offering cash benefits
to all people is best displayed in Social Security.

As these benefits have increased,
poverty among the elderly has decreased.

But because economics is not related
to the rise in homelessness,
we must look
to other explanations
for our public policy recommendations.

A day-labor market,
increase in minimum wage and more cash benefits
to the poor may serve
to alleviate poverty but not homelessness.

What else causes people
to become homeless?

Some of these authors argue that it is other micro-level causes,
such as mental illness,
family problems or drug abuse.

Still others believe that people become homeless due
to changes in public policy or the housing market.

The arguments
for and against each of the other explanations are just as extensive as my evaluation of economic factors as a cause.

Whatever the actual reason or reasons
for homelessness are,
any public policy recommendation should not be based on the economic theory,
but on a combination of others.