Child A received baby books from family members and friends when she was born. Her parents talked, sang and read to her from the first moment they held her. She had enriching toys.
As soon as she was 2, her mother began taking her to library story time, and at 3 she attended preschool. For her 5th birthday, she flew with her family to visit her grandparents, who lived near Disneyland.
Child A was protected from television commercials and from the numbing effects of passive TV-watching by her parents, who limited her viewing time to one-half hour per day.
Child B’s family and friends didn’t see much point in talking to him when he was small because he couldn’t possibly have known what they were saying anyway. When he was 2 weeks old, his mother laughed with her boyfriend at the frown on his tiny face when she put a dollop of ice cream in his mouth.
No one sang or read to him. When he was 2 his mother put him and his little sister in bed and left them alone for hours at a time. No one told him when it was his 5th birthday. His toys were few and cheap, and they were quickly broken. The TV was his constant babysitter.
His mother complained that he was a burden, and she considered altering his birth certificate so she could enroll him in school at age 4.
These two children went to the same kindergarten. Their teacher began their math studies by teaching the numbers from 1 to 9. Child A excelled, which was no surprise to her parents. She had delighted them when she could count to 20 even before she was 2.
Child B had never heard of numbers, and although his teacher came to his table many times, he couldn’t grasp their significance. He did like to play with the counting cubes she gave him, though, and whenever she turned her back, he built towers. One day when he thought no one was looking, he stuffed several cubes in his pocket. The teacher made him give them back, which made him angry, and he knocked over the basket where they were kept.
Child A came to school with thousands of hours of language experience. She was on the verge of becoming a reader.
Child B had never seen a book except on TV. He had no idea what they were for, and when one was placed in his hand, he amused himself with opening and closing its pages. At playtime he hit a classmate with it in a dispute over who would get to play with a shiny red truck.
Child A learned much more than Child B even though both were exposed to the same good lessons because it takes knowledge to gain knowledge, and the more one knows, the easier it is to learn new things. What held Child B back was the lack of language experience, enrichment and positive stimulation in his preschool years. Without these, very little learning can take place. What child B needs in kindergarten are activities to build the readiness he missed out on in his preschool years.
On the other hand, Child A needs more complex lessons at her own level. Learning will be easier for her, and the gap between the two will widen, not decrease, as the school years go by.
To say that we must hold all children to the same high expectations may sound high-minded and fair, but until we can raise the level of readiness for our disadvantaged children, that standard has little chance of success.
And when we insist that all schools have the same arbitrary high standards, it does double harm because it muddies the water in low-scoring schools and gives the teachers and administrators who truly are inadequate a place to hide.
Only when we have evened out the playing field by finding ways to develop readiness in preschool children from impoverished neighborhoods will it be reasonable and just to punish schools and children for low test scores.
