When it comes to education, even the presidential candidates` platitudes are pallid. Their cliches are tired. Their proposals are peripheral. Each is missing a major opportunity to energize his campaign by pushing for a sure-fire innovation certain to boost achievement and create a more intelligence citizenry.
George Bush and Michael Dukakis both give plenty of campaign lip-service to education. Every time he sees a TV camera, the Vice President repeats that he wants to be ”the education president.” The Massachusetts governor insists that ”no issue, no concern, no institution means more to me.”
Neither is pushing a proposal that would make a real difference, that would rescue the failing big-city school systems, reverse the disastrous dropout rates or produce a work force as well-educated and competent as those of other industrialized nations.
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Bush talks about a little more federal help for education, specifically $50 million a year for magnet schools, $500 million for disadvantaged schools that show improvement and $12 million to $50 million for experimental programs. Dukakis has called for investing $300 million a year to train science teachers and $250 million for college scholarships for future teachers and for a national board to certify teachers. Both propose federal loans to make it easier for middle-class families to handle college expenses.
What neither candidate has picked up and promoted is the best idea in decades for increasing education achievement: early childhood learning. With a commitment to early learning, a candidate could realistically pledge to improve inner-city schools, boost the likelihood that children will succeed in the classroom, cut the need for costly special education and, over time, reduce crime, dependency and other social problems sapping America`s strength. Enthusiasm for early learning is based on growing knowledge about how the brain develops and learns, especially during the earliest years of life. Research shows that the brain grows and changes most rapidly during the first few years of life, and that a child`s level of intelligence can be permanently affected-for better or worse-by the quality and quantity of learning experiences during these years.
Children who are mentally malnourished as babies, toddlers and preschoolers may never be able to keep up in school or succeed as competent members of the work force. Youngsters who get optimal and appropriate mental stimulation during these critical years are likely to have a higher IQ, to be eager and able to learn and to cope effectively with adult life and work.
These findings about brain development and intelligence have been amply demonstrated in scores of research projects. Practical ways to use this knowledge also have been tested and proven successful. What is still missing is the political leadership to turn theory and demonstration projects into reality. This is the opportunity the candidates are missing.
The best way to begin making the benefits of early learning research pay off would be for the federal government to give matching grants to states and local school districts to set up outreach programs for parents of newborns. Visiting teachers would go weekly to each infant`s home, showing parents appropriate learning activities and providing learning toys. Parents would be encouraged to visit a nearby child-parent center for informal discussions and support, and for child-care help from early learning specialists.
By age 2, youngsters would begin spending two hours a day at an early learning center, preferably a Montessori model, that also would encourage parental involvement and continue providing mothers and fathers information about their roles as their child`s first and most influential teachers. By age 3, children would be ready for a more advanced Montessori or Head Start-type program, combined with day care if parents choose. By age 5, these youngsters would enter full-day kindergarten, capable of succeeding, with a strong foundation for all subsequent education.
A candidate who pushed such a proposal would have to argue for considerable federal money for starters. But he could promise confidently that every $1 invested eventually would produce, as research projects have demonstrated, $4 to $7 in savings because of reduced school failure, special education needs, teenage pregnancies, unemployment and crime.
The benefits to the nation of a more competent, intelligent work force would be incalculable.
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A candidate backing this idea would find enthusiastic support not only from educators and parents, but also from hard-headed business leaders. The nationally respected, business-oriented Committee for Economic Development argues that it is a taxpayers` bargain.
Rarely has a presidential candidate had a better chance to promote a winning idea. Its benefits would help all children, but especially those of the urban underclass, now locked in an intergenerational cycle of poverty. It would make the tasks of all schools easier, but particularly those with large numbers of high-risk youngsters. It would reduce academic and social problems immeasurably in the most benign way-by preventing them. It would foster satisfying parent-child relationships and increase the joy parents feel in their youngster`s achievements.
And it would lay the foundations for a stronger, better, smarter country.
