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A study funded by the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies shows that it's possible to teach preschoolers the pre-reading skills they need for later school success, while at the same time fostering the socials skills necessary for making friends and avoiding conflicts with their peers.

The findings address long standing concerns on whether preschool education programs should emphasize academic achievement or social and emotional development.

"Fostering academic achievement in preschoolers need not come at the expense of healthy emotional development," said Duane Alexander, M.D., director of NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), which provided much of the funding for the study. "This study shows that it's possible to do both at the same time."

The study appears in the November/December issue of Child Development and was conducted by Karen Bierman, Ph.D., distinguished professor of Psychology at Penn State University.

In recent years, education officials and researchers who study early childhood education have struggled with whether to emphasize academics in preschool programs or to instead try to advance preschoolers' social skills, explained the NICHD project officer for the study, James Griffin, Ph.D., deputy chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch. The current study marks the first attempt to develop a curriculum that addresses both concerns equally, Dr. Griffin added.

In the study, the researchers compared the progress of students who received a traditional Head Start curriculum to those who received a curriculum with enhancements in the areas of social and emotional learning and pre-reading skills. The new program is known as the REDI (Research-Based, Developmentally Informed) Head Start program. The researchers developed the REDI curriculum by combining a program that fosters social and emotional development (Preschool PATHS) with curriculum components that promote language development and pre-reading skills. A program of the Administration for Children and Families, Head Start fosters school readiness through the provision of comprehensive services, including education, health, mental health, parent involvement, nutrition and services to children with disabilities.

Like traditional preschool programs, the REDI program emphasizes such pre-reading skills as learning the alphabet, and learning to manipulate the sounds that letters represent. Earlier research has shown that children with such skills are more successful at learning to read than are children who lack them. The REDI program also allows ample time for teachers to read interactively with children, asking them questions and encouraging their active involvement in story telling, which builds the vocabulary and language skills needed for later school success.

In the REDI program, many of the reading sessions focus on social problems and involve fictional characters who learn to master the emotional frustrations and conflicts common among groups of preschoolers. For example, in one lesson, Twiggle the Turtle learns techniques for controlling his temper. An older turtle happens by after Twiggle has just shoved a classmate who knocked over his building blocks. The older turtle teaches Twiggle, that, instead of shoving someone, he should go into his shell, take a deep breath, say what's bothering him, and say how it makes him feel. From this, the children learn that when a conflict erupts, they stop what they're doing, cross their arms, take a deep breath, state the problem, and tell the other child how it makes them feel.

"The lesson teaches them to take a time out from their emotions, to avoid acting impulsively," Dr. Bierman said. "Stating what's bothering them, and how they feel, is the basis for self control and problem solving in stressful social situations."

Other lessons involve learning how to recognize such emotions as anger and sadness in oneself and others, sharing, and taking turns.

The study took place at 44 Head Start centers in Central Pennsylvania. Half the centers used the REDI program enhancements, half used the traditional Head Start program without the enhancements.

When compared to children in the traditional Head Start program, children in the REDI program scored higher on several tests of emotional and social development than did children in the traditional program. This included skills in recognizing emotions in others, and responding appropriately to situations involving a conflict. Moreover, parents of children in the REDI group reported fewer instances of impulsivity, aggression and attention problems than did parents of children in the traditional program.

Children in the REDI program also scored higher than children in the traditional program on several tests of pre-reading skills: vocabulary, blending letter sounds together to form words, separating words into their component letter sounds, and in naming the letters of the alphabet.

Support for the study was administered by the NICHD, with funding provided by the agencies participating in the federal Interagency School Readiness Consortium, which includes the NICHD, the Administration for Children and Families, the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services of the U.S. Department of Education. The consortium fosters research that promotes school readiness for children who are at risk for later school difficulties.

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Originally Posted by John Nicholson
THE FUTURE

All we shall ever have are words.

All we shall ever possess of any value throughout our entire lives is contained within words, so let us look closely at them.
What are words.
Every human word is an individual idea, ideas that we combine to create or explain what we know or what we think.
Ideas that may be simple or complicated, ordinary or bizarre useful or harmful. All human knowledge is contained within words, numbers though they may be precise are no more then words, our best explanations are possible with the correct use of words.
Our subconscious mind stores and delivers those words at will in order to give explanation or make inquiry throughout our lives.

Only by the use of written words can we store the precise meaning of the ideas we individually consider, every thing that happens to us or others takes place somewhere at sometime, where and when individually whether we recognise it or not we are all on a personal voyage of discovery.

The importance of words within the human condition can never be overstated. Reading from the prologue of Captain Cook by Tony Horwitz, he quotes from the journal of Captain James Cook

`(Ambition leads me further then any other man as been before me, but as far as I think it is possible for any man to go)`

Proud as I am to be from the same county and country and world as captain cook I am stirred by both his words and deeds.

My thoughts on the human condition are influenced from where we are, after a century described by Isaiah Berlin as the must horrific in the history of humanity, a century where he lived from nine years after its inception until three years before its close giving him both the time and the perception to write an explanation of philosophy and humanity concurrent with his century.

(The goal of philosophy is always the same, to assist men to understand themselves and thus operate in the open and not wildly in the dark.)

(Injustice, poverty, slavery, these may be cured by reform or revolution, but men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective, a vast variety of them, seldom predictable, at times incompatible.)

At sixty five years of age there is no time to look at the past only time to prepare for the future, my mistakes the worlds mistakes are history we do not have to repeat history only learn from it, individually we have in a modern world to absorb vast amounts of inconsequential knowledge, we need tools to deal with that knowledge, not only inconsequential knowledge which is peripheral to our existence but vital knowledge that enables individuals and societies to live in peaceful co-existence.

We learn naturally about everything we do from speaking to the highest achievements that humans are capable of, our personal potential in good health is virtually unlimited, only time and personal experience limit what we can achieve individually.

In combination with each other working with modern technology we are capable of building a fair world providing sufficient food and adequate housing as is necessary.

We need to exploit the natural resources that are available to us utilising the world’s non-renewable resources with respect.

The worlds greatest and most valuable resource is renewable, the human mind, by mans ingenuity every possible idea can be explored and utilised we are still in the educational Stone Age with provision and application of universal education.

Political will is lacking

I remain with James Cook and Isaiah Berlin on a journey of exploration we can longer leave education in the hands of past experience, that is not experiential every child needs to read and speak if it is to develop normally, symbol recognition in a multi dimensional manner is essential the first official part of the
One percent of vital knowledge we have to be taught early in our lives.

It is as natural for a human to learn as it is to breath, provided we arrange learning alongside practical demonstration, at an advanced stage something’s may be considered, just as you are considering this statement without reflection, without experience and without intellectual curiosity, obviously there is a better way of doing everything, but with human behavior standard practice is simple it requires no intellectual application.

Education in its present manifestation is sadly lacking, it is failing the human race, most of us live in poverty, many of us waste half our lives learning, the cost of public education is difficult for countries with little resources to sustain in its present mode.

Time taken to teach children that have become disenchanted with education not only slows down their potential development in practical experience but it takes up others time and resources that would be better used else ware

If new models of education are not to be thought through, and developed as concepts in future education on these pages where are they to be considered?

Hundreds of schools deemed to be "coasting" to satisfactory results are to be urged to stretch their pupils to achieve more.

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