The Importance of Early Education

I tutor at a place where 95% of the children are from low-income households. Every single day we encounter children who are behind in several areas and need all the help they can get. After my session on Monday I called my brother and told him, "When your son is old enough you better put him in preschool, you better read to him and you better help him with his schoolwork." Everyday I'm reminded of just how vital it is to have your child learning from an early age.

That's not to say that a child who doesn't go to preschool is doomed. I didn't go to preschool, but my older sisters and my mother read to me and my sisters did this weird faux-classroom thing (they were really bored) in which they would teach me things that my sponge-like mind never forgot. I turned out fine, but the importance of preschool should not be underestimated.

"There's increasing evidence that children gain a lot from preschool," says Kathleen McCartney, Dean of Harvard Graduate School of Education. "At preschool, they become exposed to numbers, letters, and shapes. And, more important, they learn how to socialize-- get along with other children, share, contribute to circle time." We've covered the importance of children interacting with their peers, but preschool is vital for a child's academic development. By exposing your child to fun and challenging games early, you are fostering development. It may seem arbitrary, but it's one of the biggest favors you can do for your child. Everything runs into everything else: if a kid starts behind in 1st grade then he/she will have to play catch up each year of grade school or else they will stay behind each year until it's too late. For many of the kids I tutor the concept of college is not a foregone conclusion; their parents didn't go to college and without the influence of a college-educated or college-oriented parent/sibling in the house it's difficult for them to come up with those ideas on their own. Their parents are doing all they can by taking advantage of the free tutoring and it is my hope that we can help some of these kids, but the sooner we get to them the better. If you can afford preschool or a child development center, then there should be no hesitation to enroll your child.

If you're short on money, and even if you're not, you should be reading to your kids, helping them learn their abc's, counting with them, finding interactive and fun learning games online where there are hundreds of programs you can play and download. I can't tell you the number of kids who are bothered by the very idea of learning because the culture their parents raised them in never made learning fun or even addressed learning at all. Make learning fun for your child. Make the importance of learning evident. Give your child incentives. Geoffrey Canada, founder of HCZ an innovative program for inner city youth in Harlem, came up with the idea of offering children monetary incentives to learn. The idea was met with controversy, but it works! When I was a child my Dad refused to give me allowance; there was only one way for me to earn money: $1/book. That's right, $1 per book. And it worked. I love reading now and I don't do it because I still get a dollar, it was simply a good way to get me to read outside of class.

The bottom line is that we all want our kids to do better than we did. The first step is to send them to preschool and to make sure that you are helping them along in their development. Of course a kid needs to be a kid (my father used to say, when he felt I was being too "adult", that I had only 18 years to be a kid and the rest of my life to be an adult), but a nudge in the right direction will pay dividends. Ultimately your child will thank you and hopefully they will pass it on to their children.

Here is a website with some games, activities and other ideas for your child:

http://www.theideabox.com/