THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, April 9, 1996 TAG: 9604090029
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 159 lines
READY TO LEARN. Ready to learn. Ready to learn.
It's Jamie B. Chapman's mantra these days.
Chapman, a director of the Virginia Beach Education Association, wants the city to be the first in the United States to have all of its children ``ready to learn'' by the time they enter kindergarten at age 5.
That means showing up for their first day of school with their brains wired for words and their neurons networked for numbers, able to assimilate the new information they'll be receiving in class.
More specifically, it will mean that from the day they were born, the city's children were read to, sung to, played with and exposed to a variety of sights, sounds and activities, at home or at day care or at the baby sitter's.
Studies show that such mental stimulus is crucial for intellectual development, and the earlier the better - much of this development occurs during the first three years of life. This is when connections grow in the brain that later enable children to discover that Spot is a d-o-g and that 2 plus 2 equals 4.
``Activity leads to more brain,'' Chapman says.
But many children aren't exposed to such stimulating environments, and their brains - and ability to learn - suffer for it.
Chapman has collected research that claims a third to half of kindergarten pupils nationwide show up unprepared to learn to read or to add and subtract. Even in relatively affluent and well-educated Virginia Beach, as many as half the children start school without the basic language or social capabilities to begin learning, says David E. Portis, the city's elementary-school coordinator. This limits how much and how fast they can learn.
Chapman wants to change this.
For two years, he's been organizing a first-of-its-kind Summit for Children to kick off a citywide ready-to-learn movement.
The summit is scheduled for May 8-9. Among the speakers will be Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, internationally known pediatrician, author and child-development expert, and Jim Trelease, who writes and lectures on the importance of reading aloud to children.
There will be exhibits, seminars, workshops and other presentations for parents, caregivers and educators. Awards will be given to ``family-friendly'' businesses and to organizations and individuals deemed to have helped students.
Pledges also will be solicited from individuals and groups to help children become ``ready to learn'' by such things as donating children's books to libraries, volunteering with Big Brothers and Big Sisters, or developing generous leave and flex-time policies for employees who are parents.
Next year, Chapman would like the summit to go regional.
He sees no time to waste.
His office is full of research articles, papers and books describing a use-it-or-lose-it scenario for young brains.
Children's minds develop the needed links between their billions of neurons when exposed to a rich intellectual environment. It doesn't have to be daily doses of Shakespeare and Mozart and the Louvre, but simple things like repeating rhymes, listening to a piano or seeing - even touching - a live cow.
Such exposures early in life can mean a difference of 20 to 30 points on IQ scores, some researchers say. That's the difference between below-average and average, or between average and smart.
Without such exposures, the connections aren't made. Unused brain cells can even die.
Dr. Harry T. Chugani, a pediatric neurologist and professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, has recently seen his longtime work in this area featured in national news magazines, newspapers and on network television. He says early intellectual stimulation is crucial through early adolescence.
``I think the brain provides a unique opportunity . . . to learn very well,'' Chugani says. ``You've got a time that Mother Nature provides you to learn best. And I really think it's important to take advantage of that. Not that you can't learn later in life, but it's so much easier'' when younger.
Chugani suggests that the findings from brain-development research can be looked at in a positive light, encouraging the enrichment of all young children's environments and not just correcting gaps in the experiences of the impoverished.
Talking, music, counting games, even setting the table together to learn one-to-one relationships - one fork and one plate per seat - are some of the simple things researchers suggest for increased learning success.
The Carnegie Corp. of New York in 1994 reported in ``Starting Points: Meeting the Needs of Our Youngest Children'' that this early influence is long lasting and possibly cumulative, showing greater effect - good and bad - through the middle teenage years.
Still, mothers and fathers are warned. Research also shows that children will turn away from overstimulation. Parents suffering with cranky babies at the end of long, busy days have seen the effect of this.
``There is such a thing as too much of a good thing,'' says Elaine M. Justice, chairwoman of Old Dominion University's psychology department in Norfolk. ``You don't want to overwhelm a child with stimuli . . . but, generally, they will tell you.''
Getting parents, other caregivers and entire communities to recognize children's need for early mental stimulus could pay off big, Chapman says, because it results in fewer remedial programs or students held back a grade, more resources available for accelerated classes and enrichment activities.
``It's so right on the money for improving the education system of America,'' Chapman says.
As with so many things, however, money plays a big part. The quarter of American children under age 6 who are poor - more than 10 million in 1992 - tend to have fewer language and cultural experiences than richer kids, which is one reason Chapman is seeking community involvement in his drive.
He cites disturbing statistics:
By age 4, children whose parents are professionals have heard about 45 million words in family conversation, compared with 26 million for working-class families and just 13 million for low-income families receiving welfare. The children of professionals hear seven times the number of encouraging remarks as those in welfare families and 60 percent fewer discouraging remarks.
And a recent government-sponsored study in Atlanta revealed that children in welfare families tended to score low on vocabulary and school-readiness tests compared to national averages - red flags for potential school failure.
They answered correctly just 56 percent of questions in a test of skills and concepts important to know before entering school. Forty-one percent had less than 10 books of their own; 55 percent didn't have use of a record or tape player and had less than five children's recordings. And 55 percent of the mothers reported they read to their children once a week or less.
Much the same is true here, educators say.
``We have children entering kindergarten at all different ranges of ability,'' says Portis, Virginia Beach's elementary-school coordinator. ``We have some children coming in who, because of a lack of experiences, don't recognize the first letter. . . . Then we have children who come in reading at the second-grade level and knowing their math facts.
``Really, the biggest thing I think parents can do to help their children is to start reading to them. . . .''
Chapman adds: ``I don't think people are aware that they don't talk to their kids. . . . I think you have to mount a campaign like this because we parent the same way we were parented.''
Chapman realizes he's fighting an uphill battle. Parents - frequently single or both working - are busy and tired at the end of the day. Schools follow decades of traditional educational thinking, such as generally not teaching foreign languages until high school, even though studies show that children more easily pick up languages early in life.
``Where's the sanity in that?'' Chapman asks.
As a parent-teacher association president at his children's school, Chapman started exploring parental involvement in education and stumbled onto the growing body of research into the development of children's minds.
``I couldn't get away from it after that,'' he says. ``All parental involvement is critically important. But if you don't do it in the first three years, you've missed the boat. This is just as important information as knowing not to smoke, knowing to eat a balanced diet.''
And after the summit?
``I hope that each school will start experimenting on ways to reach out and provide information and support for infants in their school zones, that they'll form partnerships with pediatricians, with service organizations, with businesses . . . to help put in place some support systems for an awful lot of people who are isolated in their lives.
``About a third of kids are doing well in school, really well in school. We want everyone to do well.'' MEMO: For more information on the Virginia Beach Summit for Children, call
486-0202.
ILLUSTRATION: JANET SHAUGHNESSY/The Virginian-Pilot
by CNB