blogging Disrupting Class #9: Chapter 6 -- Impact of Earliest Years

The previous post summarizes how Chapter 5 ("The System for Student-Centric Learning") describes how such a system could be disruptively implemented in US public education. In Chapter 6, the authors take a bit of a detour to express their views on how best to spend money on early childhood education. There are some interesting sights en route, including a startling one: intelligence types are tossed overboard in favor of 'old school' IQ. All in all, though, this detour doesn't move the book any closer to its intended destination...

The opening vignette for Chapter 6 ("The Impact of the Earliest Years on Students' Success") has one simple purpose which is summarized in this sentence: "It was as though his learning processes had been shaped so early that very little could be done to change them" (p.147). This foreshadows the core argument of this chapter, which is that since research indicates that children's intellectual capacities are largely formed by the time they reach school, money is better spent on trying to reach children before they reach school, which will "make schools' jobs considerably easier" (p.148). As the authors note, the subject of school readiness deserves "at least a book-length treatise," so this chapter focuses on offering a specific proposal aimed at policymakers. Basically, the argument appears to be: universal prekindergarten would be an ineffective waste of money (p.148, 154); teaching parents (especially "young, single inner-city mothers") to talk to their children would be a better use of money (p.155).

There are several good pieces in this chapter, but the argument as a whole falls apart IMO. Pre-school intellectual development is important, and the research by Risley and Hart on "language dancing", or the difference between verbal interactions among college-educated families vs. welfare families (48 million words vs. 13 million words in the first 36 months) is fascinating and notable (pp.149-153). Acknowledging the issue of "multigenerational entrapment" in a "cycle of educational underachievement and poverty" is also important (pp.153-154). Encouraging "young, single inner-city mothers" to talk more to their children and getting the word out more broadly on the importance of this research (p.154-155) would definitely be a good thing. But why in the world is this the sole policy recommendation offered for "What to Do" (pp.154-155)??

Unwittingly, I suspect, this argument shows the extent to which this is a cultural problem. Disrupting Class does not really address the most obvious issue with this recommendation: having a great impact requires universal, or at least widespread, participation, yet participation is voluntary -- curiously, achieving maximal effect would require imposing a draconian, governmental solution -- mandatory parenting classes? Good luck with that one. A more glaring omission is zero mention of day care -- Head Start is mentioned, but dismissed as too little, too late. But why put this primarily on "young, single inner-city mothers" as opposed to, say, calling for better training of day care providers? Or, perhaps some research which studies whether or not day care providers are already providing effective "language dancing?"

But it doesn't really matter, because the recommendation falls apart on closer examination. "Language dancing" works - how do we know? Because the number of words children had heard correlated with higher IQ scores at ages 3 and 9 (p.150). I"m still shaking my head over this one -- in any other book, this would be an unremarkable if debatable argument. But Disrupting Class, after hammering its readers repeatedly on the importance of intelligence types chapter after chapter, suddenly goes old school on us: school success is defined in terms of IQ, or more specifically verbal-linguistic intelligence. What happened to the other intelligence types??? (Even logical/mathematical intelligence, also associated with IQ, apparently does not enter into this argument.) Note #5 (p.157) talks about other types of intelligence and related research, but certainly comes nowhere near anything related to a specific policy recommendation. Verbal intelligence is highly important to school success as school is presently constituted. But such a single-minded reliance on it undermines the chapter's argument -- all the more so given the previous emphasis on multiple intelligence types.

In the end, this chapter really offers little more than 'pre-school childhood development is important, including language development; we should try to make this available to all our children'. Getting the word out on how "language dancing" aids in verbal-linguistic development is a good thing. No doubt researchers could discover how parents encourage other types of intelligence in their pre-schoolers. But should we forego universal prekindergarten or Head Start programs in favor of more parent-based ones? The argument offered in this chapter isn't anywhere close to convincing. Overall, this chapter is a curious detour that does more to muddy the book's larger argument than it does to advance it...

Chapter 5
Chapter 4 (Part 3)
Chapter 4 (Part 2)
Chapter 4 (Part 1)
Chapter 3
Chapter 2
Chapter 1
Introduction