CHAPTER 12: "Disadvantaged" Brains
Plasticity represents a double-edged sword: Processes available to be changed for the better may also be changed for the worse. -- RICHARD M. LERNER, PH.D. [1]
In the flossiest enclaves of New York's Upper East Side, an unusual child-care center serves the diverse needs of preschool children from two dramatically different constituencies. First to arrive each morning, the "neighborhood" children emerge from the sumptuous lobbies of their apartment buildings, accompanied by nannies or smartly clad parents. Chattering busily, they set about the activities of the morning as they await the arrival of their classmates, who come by bus from a welfare hotel. These youngsters started the morning in cramped rooms, usually without kitchen facilities, where as many as four children and a mother share two bunk beds. More silently, sometimes somberly, they enter the classrooms and begin the school day.
Lourdes Rivera, the energetic director of this venture in humanity, is a veteran teacher of children from severely deprived environments, but this is her first experience with such widely disparate groups. Like many visitors, I wondered how these children from opposite ends of the socioeconomic yardstick relate to each other.
"Kids are kids," stated Ms. Rivera emphatically. "They all learn from and help each other." To adults on the staff, however, the special needs of the homeless children are all too evident. Many come from brutalizing environments where even their most basic safety needs are in jeopardy. The simple learning experiences taken for granted in most families have not been available. For example, the children may never have eaten a meal at a table or helped (or even seen) anyone cook on a real stove. Because of their dangerous surroundings, both indoors and out, some have not been allowed to move freely about, so their motor development is often behind schedule. Some of the most serious gaps are in language and attention.
What is the prognosis for these youngsters, arguably the most disadvantaged group in our society? Can an enriched and caring environment make up for the appalling experiential abyss of their daily lives? "If we get them early enough," says Ms. Rivera, "I think we can make a big difference." Noticeable improvement usually begins as soon as they enter the preschool, she says.
"We've saved a lot of lives. I think of Matthew, a homeless child I worked with a couple of years ago. He was one who came from a loving family, but they had so many problems -- both parents were in treatment for drug addiction. Matthew made fantastic gains when he was with us -- he is in kindergarten now and I just heard he's being tested for the gifted program. We got him early, and his parents tried their best to help. When kids are older, though, or when the environment at home is too awful, it is so much harder."
The most difficult children to reach, she said, are those who have been physically abused or suffered severe emotional neglect from the adults in their lives. "Even when their mouths smile, their eyes don't," she reflected sadly.
Research on the long-term effects of early intervention programs confirm Ms. Rivera's observations. Although, as one researcher remarked, even the most enriched surroundings will not make every child into a Nobel Prize winner, environments can determine how well each one's inherited pattern of abilities is actualized. And while cognitive "stimulation" is important, so is the presence of caring adults in a child's life. Any teacher knows how important emotional as well as material support is for all children, and in this respect, at least, "disadvantage" does not always rest on economics. Even ostensibly "privileged" children may suffer in much more subtle, but still significant, ways if their emotional needs are neglected or if parental expectations are too demanding. Ms. Rivera reflected ruefully on one such case.
"We have a little boy here whose parents are very wealthy, but you might also call him 'disadvantaged' in a sense," she mused. "Paul has been in day care since birth; he's two and a half now and he's here from eight A.M. until six P.M. Then his parents hire our staff members to take him home and stay with him until they get home, which might be anywhere from seven until eleven that night. Unfortunately, it has to be a different person each day. He's a wonderful little boy, hut he's just so weary and tired most of the time. Naturally, his parents have big expectations for him. He's still vastly better off than these homeless kids, of course, but . . ."
As we walked through the classrooms, I was impressed by the cheerful environment as well as the obvious attention by staff members and volunteers to the children's needs. Although some children required special help or comforting from adults, most were playing, learning, and interacting happily. To a practiced observer there were major variations in the maturation of language skills, but it was not always obvious to a casual eye which children were the "privileged" ones and which were the homeless.
As we entered the last classroom, I saw a small, sad-eyed child sitting alone, listlessly resting his head on the table in front of him. Stifling the urge to sit down and take him onto my lap, I whispered to Ms. Rivera, "One of the homeless?"
"No," she replied, "that's Paul."
DIMENSIONS OF DISADVANTAGE
Children are "disadvantaged" to the degree they do not receive adequate physical, social-emotional, or intellectual nurturing. Longstanding deprivation in any of these domains puts children at risk; when factors overlap and accumulate, learning, lives, and society are proportionately endangered.
In the United States the most seriously and dangerously disadvantaged are the children of poverty, a problem swept under the rug for so long that it has become a sizable lump that now threatens to trip up the progress of the body politic. A disgraceful number of American infants arrive each year into worlds of hunger, drug abuse, and neglect. Many are born to young teenagers whose own brains lack both a history of adequate nurturance and the final strokes of nature's maturational brush. These parents are ill equipped to provide for even their children's most basic physical needs, much less their intellects. This growing subculture of deprivation represents a growing threat to our institutions of education and inevitably, of law, despite demonstrated results from programs showing that it may be possible to repair and restructure, at least to some degree, both lives and intellects.
The physical, emotional, and cognitive events that transpire during the early years of a brain's development have a lifelong impact, not only on that brain itself but also on the society in which it will inevitably make its mark -- for better or for worse. Children from economically disadvantaged families often come to school with brains poorly equipped for success there. The same is increasingly true for some of their more privileged counterparts. Let's examine the reasons why.
The Physically Deprived Brain
Many economically disadvantaged children start out with brains already compromised. Poor nutrition, substance abuse, or excessive stress for the pregnant mother can jeopardize its structural integrity. Pregnant women in lower class urban neighborhoods are more likely to be exposed to lead from car exhaust and to other pollutants that may harm the brain. Prematurity, often found in conjunction with poor health-care, can also put children at risk for learning disorders. Every year more and more preterm babies are being saved through technological advances, but without the enriched environments more common to middle class homes, these children are educationally at risk. Middle class preemies are more likely to recover or show milder forms of learning or attention disabilities. The prognosis depends on the severity of the initial problem and the infant's innate resilience, but also on the quality of the early learning environment.
For the children of poverty, nutrition may be inadequate, lead poisoning still a threat, and crowded quarters disruptive of free play, development of motor skills, and sleep patterns. Many poor children spend a great deal of time in front of a television set, which, unfortunately, does little to remedy perceptual, motor, cognitive, or interpersonal delays. They are much more likely to be targets of abuse and physical neglect. Most children living in poverty are never enrolled in any type of preschool; a large majority of the 253,000 children estimated to be homeless at this writing never attend school regularly. [2] Many more not classified as homeless suffer similar conditions.
Severe malnutrition takes a lasting toll on mental ability. The best-known study showing its long-term effects was conducted with a group of Korean children who grew up in conditions of extreme poverty, including malnutrition to the age of eighteen months, when they were adopted into American middle class homes. Although they rapidly regained much of the lost ground, the ill effects of the early experience on learning skills were never totally reversed. [3] No one has measured the effects of more subtle forms of dietary restriction, but there is good reason to suspect that it, too, can have lasting consequences for the brain, particularly if protein is inadequate.
No matter what its initial potential, a brain malnourished, assailed by toxic environments, or poorly nurtured has little chance of realizing its biological promise. Because risk factors are so interactive, youngsters higher up on the stack of environmental privilege are much better "buffered," but deprivation in one or more of the basic areas of need can have serious results for any child.
The Emotionally Deprived Brain
Children who do not receive interpersonal and emotional support during early years are harmed in less obvious but still devastating ways, although specific effects on the brain have not been well documented. Teachers are all too acutely aware that a mind preoccupied with worries or unmet emotional needs is a poor candidate for academic learning. The emotional centers of the brain (technically part of the limbic system, which underlies the cortex), are closely linked to more primitive systems whose job it is to "gate" the messages that pass into -- or are kept out of -- the thinking brain. If the "emotional" brain is preoccupied with fears or anxiety, it may fail to activate the proper cortical switches for attention, memory, motivation, and learning. High levels of stress can also change the fine chemical balance that enables messages to pass through all these systems; although the "good stress," generated by exciting and manageable challenges, may enhance learning, a child who is emotionally stressed may literally have trouble getting the brain's juices flowing for academics.
THE "ADVANTAGED" DEPRIVED BRAIN
Paradoxically, the same lack of respect for children's needs that causes the lump under the rug of poverty also threatens mental development at the other end of the socioeconomic continuum. Even materially "privileged" youngsters are put at emotional and intellectual risk when they become victims of a caretaker shuffle that exposes them to emotional neglect, inferior day care, or inadequate surrogate parenting. Habits of learning can also be compromised by inexperienced caretakers who overprotect their charges. Such oversolicitous attention may stem either from fear that children might get hurt or that they might complain to their parents if they don't get their own way. It can foster both "learned helplessness" and habits of manipulating adults.
Victims of the Caretaker Shuffle
Many parents find the growing shortage of well-trained caregivers a source of frustration and anguish. Most parents naturally love their children and care deeply about their development. At the same time, with the majority of children in some sort of child care because either a single parent or both parents are working, adults who do not share their educational experience, conversational ability, cultural background, or academic values are being hired to mold the offsprings' brains. As a result, concerned observers report, the insidious tendrils of disadvantage are quietly inserting themselves across the socioeconomic spectrum.
Dr. Fred Hechinger, education editor of the New York Times, spoke at a recent meeting for teachers and administrators of the country's private schools to warn that their constituency is being profoundly influenced by changes in child-rearing habits among the middle and upper-middle class. The problems of children in poor and affluent families are becoming more and more similar, he explained, because the same people are taking care of the children. [4] No matter how loving or well-intentioned they may be, the environments they create for development of language and thought are quite often inconsonant with the parents' and the schools' expectations for the child.
Andree Brooks, author of Children of Fast-Track Parents and an outspoken critic of current trends in child rearing, warns of the potentially disastrous effects of a lack of nurturing by well-to-do parents who depend on an ever-changing stream of caregivers. A host of developmental problems, including "stunted language ability," may ensue, she maintains. [5, 6]
"I hear this all over the country, and I'm hearing it more and more," she told me. "There's an increasing concern from the teachers of young children of the upper-middle class, which has traditionally been such a source of enormous educational and cultural enrichment, that the children are coming in without the same exposure. They're taking on some of the aspects of the disadvantaged. Upper-middle-class women are going back to work even sooner after their children are born than disadvantaged women, and all the traditional interactions we have assumed between them and their children are missing."
The practice of hiring surrogate caretakers is spreading, Ms. Brooks adds, as well-to-do nonworking mothers hire live-ins in order to keep up with the Joneses. And the mores of this fast track are now being copied by the less affluent. In countries abroad, she says, the same concerns are also beginning to surface.
"Do you think we have lost respect for children and their needs?" I asked.
"Absolutely," replied Ms. Brooks. "The child has been devalued." [7]
Reveta Bowers, director of a large early-childhood program in Los Angeles, has similar concerns that extend beyond the children of the wealthy. "You'd be surprised how many children are being raised by surrogates who don't speak English, and the parents don't care because they think the child will be bilingual," she says. But this rationalization, she points out, may put some children at risk for learning problems.
Insufficient research is available to quantify the effects of bilingual environments, but those that are inferior or not "natural" to the family itself may slow down overall language development and exacerbate potential learning problems. The quality of the language input, whatever it is, often varies according to the educational background of the speaker. While proficiency in more than one language is obviously an advantage, a child -- particularly one who is not linguistically talented by nature -- needs to interact with adequate syntax in at least one language to wire up the basis for development of the others.
Still, because of insufficient numbers of well-trained child-care providers, families at all socioeconomic levels feel pressed to compromise when they hire a caregiver. "It's a gamble," says Professor Edward Zigler of Yale University, a leading expert on early development. "If you get a wonderful one, it's like having a new valued family member. If you get an awful one, you and your child are in trouble." Zigler is acutely aware that even families who can afford good care for their children have great difficulty finding it. "Up and down the economic ladder, children are receiving care that may be compromising their optimal development." [8]
It is an unfortunate reality that the low pay scale for day-care workers has similarly tended to downgrade the level of skills in these facilities. Not many are lucky enough to have the able and dedicated corps of teachers and volunteers found in Ms. Rivera's center. Yet large numbers of children are in their care during the time when these developing brains are crafting the mental skills of a lifetime.
Children as Artifacts of Ambition
Parents who care about their children's success are vulnerable to false information about the best ways to get their children onto the academic fast track. A zeitgeist, fostered by dubious "experts" and seized upon by well-intentioned or guilty parents, now advocates an all-out campaign to "stimulate" mental ability. Parents, beware! Trying to force learning that may be all wrong for the child's level of development is dangerous, as are the inappropriate demands for performance -- no matter how subtle -- that usually accompany this kind of pressure. Even in the wealthiest of homes, a child who becomes an artifact of parental ego is at risk in a very real sense.
"Superbabies" of all ages are driven (quite literally, to an unremitting schedule of lessons, as well as more figuratively) to perform. These child "products" appear to be the polar opposite of the physically and intellectually neglected children of disadvantage, yet they, too, are deprived of important basic rights. I hear many tales like that of a young suburban mother who told me, "You would not believe the mothers in my neighborhood; they have flash cards for their kids before they're two and the children are in so many lessons and programs that they hardly have time to play! My neighbor insists her three-year-old sing the alphabet song; the other day the child was pleading, 'Please, Mommy, please, no more alphabet,' but the mother kept saying, 'Just one more time, sweetheart. Do it for Mommy.'"
Driving the cold spikes of inappropriate pressure into the malleable heart of a child's learning may seriously distort the unfolding of both intellect and motivation. This self-serving intellectual assault, increasingly condemned by teachers who see its warped products, reflects a more general ignorance of the essential needs of the growing brain. In a society that reveres the speed with which a product can be extruded from the system, that has become impatient with the essential processes of childhood, that measures children's mental growth like steaks on a butcher's scales, and that deifies test scores instead of taking the time to respect developmental needs, every child is potentially in jeopardy.
Wise adults do not impose demands for which development and experience have not yet primed the system. They take the time to listen to the child, to observe and enrich the environment accordingly. If they are too busy, lack the coping skills, or neglect their responsibility, the chances at each stage of development may be lost or diminished.
If a brain is jeopardized, what are the chances for "synaptic remodeling"? No one has yet been able to measure the long-term toll of too much pressure. Improved environments can make up to some degree for some experiential physical deprivation if it is "caught" early enough. The brutal truth, however, is that more acute forms of disadvantage leave indelible imprints. Their most serious consequences are probably for higher cognitive functions such as language and abstract reasoning. Emotional deprivation and stress take their toll in less measurable ways.
Research does not suggest bombarding children with high-powered brain-training or forcing overwhelming doses of "stimulation" on unready nervous systems. Prying open preschool minds and pouring in ersatz precocity is not the answer; realistically assessing -- and then addressing -- children's real intellectual needs is the way to improve their chances.
SOCIAL CLASS AND MENTAL DEVELOPMENT: THE PROBLEM NOBODY WANTS TO TALK ABOUT
It is an uneasy but incontrovertible fact that, on average, individuals from different social classes have widely different success in school. A close look suggests that learning patterns and brain organization may be shaped by certain types of environments in ways that make children's adjustment to academic learning more difficult.
Yet despite research that might help teachers understand and teach high-risk children more successfully, the issue of social class is one that many people prefer not to discuss. In an address to members of the American Psychological Association on the subject of "Race, Culture, Class, and Ethnicity," Dr. Richard Brislin pointed out that it has become easier and even more acceptable to talk about racial differences than about social class differences in America. The two should definitely not be confused. [9]
Race is determined by a person's genes. There is no convincing evidence of any genetic differences between races in learning potential. According to Dr. Brislin and other scholars, however, because people of the same race and ethnic background tend to grow up in communities where social class, cultural habits, and practices are similar, important differences caused by these variables may seem to be racial in origin.
"In classrooms, as in American life generally, ethnicity is confounded with social class," explains Harvard's Dr. Courtney Cazden. In her useful book, Classroom Discourse, she makes a realistic case for better education of teachers in understanding, accepting, and teaching children of different social classes, as well as those of differing cultural backgrounds. [10]
"Social class" or socioeconomic status (SES) is defined in research by several factors, primarily family income, parents' level of education, and occupations. The terms "lower class" or "underclass" are used by social scientists as an objective descriptor that includes both working class poor and the chronically unemployed. These terms sound blunt, but they are not meant to label individuals in a pejorative way, merely to describe a particular socioeconomic group. Any set of statistical generalizations about group differences has many exceptions; the main danger in reporting on this sort of research is in creating new stereotypes and unfair prejudices. But it is equally unfair to ignore data that may help us understand why some children have difficulty adjusting to school.
Members of different socioeconomic as well as different cultural groups tend to have differing values regarding children's learning and behavior. Overall, they rear children in different ways, have different ideas of what is important for learning, and may encourage different "habits of mind." Thus it is not surprising that children from these different types of environments arrive in school differently adapted to learning. It is unfortunate, in a country that claims to take pride in its heterogeneity, that educators have too often tried to cram all children into an unyielding curricular format. All children need a chance to participate equally in academic success, but unless policymakers start paying attention to the realities, they risk destroying both our children and our intellectual standards.
Separating Class Differences From Racial Differences
A growing number of studies confirm that irrespective of race, people develop different patterns of learning skills according to the social class in which they are reared. [11] Concerned researchers also point out that too many studies have tended to draw conclusions about blacks in general after studying only underclass black children. "In studies of black and white children and children from other ethnic groups, it' s rare to find any race differences when class differences are carefully looked at," points out Dr. Brislin.
Dr. Sandra Graham of the Graduate School of Education at UCLA, one of a few scientists looking specifically at both racial and social-class differences, studied levels of school motivation among lower and middle class black and white seventh-grade students. She found significant differences between students from the different socioeconomic groups; the only racial differences were that the middle class black children displayed the highest persistence, more positive levels of self perception, and greater sustained achievement strivings. [12]
Teachers like myself, who have taught academically brilliant as well as not-so-brilliant students from various racial, cultural, and socioeconomic groups, realize how foolish it is to categorize youngsters intellectually on any basis. Still, in the classroom it also becomes clear that all students have tucked a myriad of formative learning experiences into their brains long before they started tucking notes and assignment sheets into their bookbags. The research shows, although there are always many exceptions, the most predictable variations in school success in most countries are found among families of different social classes.
Different SES, Different Learning
Children from families of different social classes may be prepared for and supported in learning differently. Even when not physically or emotionally disadvantaged, some children receive different types of cognitive and language stimulation because parents' level of education, perceptions of children's needs, and style of approaching problems may diverge from the "middle class norm." According to Dr. Brislin, middle and upper class families tend to emphasize verbal development, self-control, intellectual curiosity, and social skills, whereas values for many working class children are more likely to stress obedience, neatness, good manners, and quietness around adults. While this focus may have been more appropriate in an economy with a large number of factory jobs, it is maladaptive for the type of work increasingly available as a part of information technology. Moreover, because lower class children may not be as assertive around adult authority figures, teachers may expect less of them.
Social class is such a powerful predictor of "mainstream" test results that it can even override early risk factors. In one representative study, a group of researchers in Zurich, Switzerland, compared the long-term development of premature infants from higher- and lower-class families. These children were considered at high risk for language problems, learning disabilities, and "lower mental functioning" because of complications surrounding pregnancy and birth. Their course of development was also compared with that of a group of healthy full-term babies matched with the preemies according to social class. All the children in the study were carefully observed and tested for language development and intelligence at frequent intervals until they were five years old. As is almost invariably the case, socioeconomic status (SES) was highly correlated with tested ability in the normal, full-term children from the beginning of their lives. The at-risk children, however, all started out with below-average scores. Yet by age five the power of the environment over the biological problems had been demonstrated. The middle class high-risk group had narrowed the gap, while the lower SES children had not. [13]
Studies from all over the world demonstrate that children from higher SES groups have better language development and more mature cognitive skills. [14] Nevertheless, higher socioeconomic level alone does not offer a fail-safe guarantee of good progress, nor, certainly, are children raised in so-called "underclass" homes automatically destined to have difficulty in school. U.S. Education Department researcher Martin Orland, although acknowledging the high statistical correlations between poor academic achievement and "intense" poverty factors, points out that, even in poor homes, parents' attitudes have the most dominant influence. He claims that measures of "home atmosphere," such as parent's aspirations for children, language stimulation, the amount of reading materials in the home, and family attitudes toward education, actually explain more of the variation in student achievement than parental income levels or other traditional socioeconomic measures. [15]
Families whose poverty has been long-standing and severe are much less likely to be able to provide a supportive home atmosphere, but some succeed despite the odds. It is clearly absurd to make assumptions about home quality only on the basis of an economic yardstick, and Dr. Brislin warns against letting class distinctions become a new source of discrimination. These differences should only be a "reminder variable," he points out, to lead us to more constructive opportunities for intervention.
In a large, longitudinal study conducted in England, researcher Gordon Wells was surprised when the expected correlation between class and educational attainment at age seven did not emerge. Carefully analyzing his results, Wells, too, developed "grave reservations" about any simple statements regarding this connection. Noting the close link between language development and school success, he concluded that certain 'kinds' of interaction with adults, particularly a child's conversational experience, are mainly responsible for the difference. [16]
What Is the Problem?
Why, specifically, do so many "learning disadvantaged" [17] children have difficulty adapting to the demands of traditional schooling? Many become school dropouts during the first week of first grade -- although they usually continue to occupy a desk (and a great deal of the teacher's physical and mental energy) for several more alienating and unproductive years. In the meanwhile, the growing dichotomy between their level of skills and the demands of the school interfere with the entire mechanism of teaching and learning, and their poorly suppressed rage may erupt in externally or personally destructive forms. Unsuccessful, "turned-off" children exist in every school, but they are endemic in areas housing the poor of our society, where over half of the five-year-olds who surge into the kindergarten each year may be doomed to failure.
These statistics are particularly tragic because poor parents often "have an especially high -- even passionate regard for education and view it as the most promising means to improve their children's futures," asserts Lisbeth B. Schorr in her landmark book Within Our Reach. [18] They need help, however, in translating their yearning for their children's achievement into useful action.
PREPARING GROWING BRAINS FOR THE "CULTURE OF THE SCHOOL"
No one knows exactly what proportion of the ultimate differences between mental abilities come from differences in types of environmental input during the years when the brain is being encouraged -- or not encouraged -- to practice and master different types of skills. It is clear, however, that the closer the culture of the home (or the primary care center) is to that of the school, the easier the child's adjustment is likely to be.
Schooling, particularly beyond the elementary years, demands specific types of skills and even particular ways of looking at the world and of reasoning. [19] Such "scholastic thinking" involves analyzing experience, reasoning reflectively, using formal logic, and assimilating, storing, and recalling information. Because language development is so closely tied to these mental skills and to brain development as well, it assumes an especially pivotal role in preparing children for learning.
Many "learning disadvantaged" children are handicapped by lack of exposure to school-like ways of talking and thinking. Academically advantaged brains, in contrast, are well-girded for school learning because adults have provided models and given them time and encouragement to practice these basic ways of dealing with information.
Adult Models of Problem-Solving
The most frequently mentioned factors in the development of intelligence might include parental encouragement for achievement, exposure to intellectual models, and encouragement to rely on language. They are, in short, aspects of the upper-middle-class environment. -- Dr. Robert B. McCall [20]
Psychologists have spent a great deal of time studying the ways in which schooled and unschooled people typically go about solving problems and how they model these mental habits for their children. Homes influence several important dimensions of this "cognitive style":
1. Ways of Categorizing
Studies across many different cultures show that people who have been to school tend to group objects and ideas together in more abstract ways than do young children or unschooled adults, who tend to relate ideas on the basis of their physical attributes or use. For example, if asked whether an apple matches best with a pear, a red ball, or a knife, most schooled people, who tend to think more categorically, will respond "pear" because it is a member of the category "fruit." Unschooled individuals, and young children may choose the ball "because they look alike" or the knife "because it is used to cut the apple." Although there is really no right or wrong answer here, schools tend to expect children to have the ability to deal with categorical modes of thought. A child who has not been exposed to them at home ("Johnny, let's put all the vegetables in this cupboard, and all the fruits in that one") may have difficulty understanding this type of reasoning.
2. Internalizing Understanding
"Many at-risk students have not internalized a cultural sense of what understanding is, probably because parents and teachers seldom hold 'understanding conversations' with them," suggests Dr. Stanley Pogrow, who has worked on ways to teach "thinking skills" to disadvantaged elementary school students. [21] Having "understanding conversations" means trying to get a child to reason through, evaluate, and express ideas ("How many different ways could this story end? Let's predict which one the author will choose ... "). Dr. Pogrow says many of his students come to school not knowing how to use ideas to understand, generalize, or even talk about anything but "turfdom," because they have never been exposed to other types of thinking. Incidentally, he notes, "this problem is not limited to students from low SES homes."
Parents and teachers who try to force high-level material on brains that have not been primed to accommodate it should be warned by Dr. Pogrow's finding that it is much better to converse intelligently about simple subjects than to have simple conversations about overly sophisticated content. "For example," he says, "teaching students Shakespeare will not develop general thinking skills if relatively few understanding conversations take place." Unfortunately, many of the "competency-based" teaching agendas that have been cantilevered into classrooms for disadvantaged children have fallen into this latter trap. Well-intentioned, they are essentially flawed by attempting to pour in information and drill children to repeat it at a superficial level rather than taking the time to give understanding -- and synapses -- a solid foundation.
It is possible to get almost any child deeply and constructively involved with important material, but the teacher must have the sensitivity -- and above all, the time -- to engage the students in activities or a dialogue that is meaningful to them. Dr. Robert Coles tells in his book The Call of Stories of his delight in "culturally disadvantaged" youngsters who "take to" a novel such as Silas Marner, often regarded as old-fashioned and boring. The reason? A skilled teacher spent time leading them into personally meaningful discussions of moral and spiritual issues in the novel that reflected many of their own life concerns. [22] Unfortunately, "competency," as it has too often been defined, has no time or space for this type of intellectual inquiry.
3. Reflectivity or Impulsivity
Unsuccessful students often tend to act without thinking. Research shows that impulsive youngsters fail to talk through problems in their own heads; they jump in without analyzing or planning the appropriate response. In research on problem-solving, students who use such an impulsive approach are seen as "weak reasoners" because they fail to apply what they already know to the new situation. [23] "Strong reasoners," on the other hand, are able to use previous examples to help reach conclusions.
The impulsive style (which overlaps with the problem now diagnosed as "attention deficit disorder") gets people into trouble outside of school, as well. There is a well-recognized link between this type of behavior, delinquency, and adult criminality.
Children who do not stop, reflect, and talk through situations often come from homes where adults never showed them how, irrespective of their economic advantages. I sometimes notice parents or caregivers who model widely different styles with children in public places such as the supermarket. Some are busy teaching the child to talk through alternatives ("No, we won't buy two boxes of cereal today because it will get stale before we eat it all. Tell me if you want Goops or Nuggets."). Others give in to the child's impulsive demands. Still others try to control behavior physically, with a minimum of conversation. They may even slap or jerk the child around as he reaches for desired treats. These parents undoubtedly are managing the situation in ways they think appropriate, and of course, we all tend to recreate the ways in which we ourselves were handled. The child who is being taught to stop and reflect is the one more likely to succeed in the culture of the school and perhaps, beyond it as well.
"Reflective" approaches are a useful adjunct to inspiration in nonverbal problem-solving such as in art work, geometry, or higher mathematical reasoning. One of the tests used to measure whether someone responds reflectively or impulsively requires picking the exact match for a drawing of a common object, such as a house, from several very close and confusing alternatives. To be scored "reflective," a child needs to take the time to compare carefully, analyze details, and weigh alternatives. Even in this visual task, however, many reflective children talk and analyze their way through the problem ("I think I'll start with the first one. Let's see, the chimney is different. Now, how about the second?" etc.).
An interesting cross-cultural study not long ago showed that American and Chinese-American children of comparable SES were similar in the way they developed the ability to solve the problems on this test. A comparable group of Japanese children, however, became more accurate much earlier in life in finding the matching picture. They outscored the American and Chinese youngsters, speculated the researchers, not because they were smarter, but because they were better able to manage their own patterns of thinking and responding. [24] These researchers did not hazard any guesses as to where they learned this mental control.
4. Scaffolding for Learning to Remember
Another major way in which parents who have been successful in school tend to differ from those with less schooling is in showing children ways to remember things. As they use and talk about their own memory strategies, their child becomes aware that remembering something doesn't just happen automatically but is something over which he or she has some control.
"I have five things I must buy at the hardware store this morning; let's see, I need two tools -- a hammer and a big screwdriver -- and three kinds of Wire -- thin, medium, and thick (categorizing). I'll remember H,S,W,W,W (forming active memory strategies)."
Or, "I think I'd better make a list so I won't forget." (Shows importance of writing and reading as well as planning ahead.)
5. Analytical vs. Relational Styles of Thinking
Traditional schooling also tends to teach people to approach problems analytically. This way of thinking calls on abstract logic rather than firsthand experience. For example, one of the cognitive skills learned in the culture of the school is to reason with syllogisms.
All of the women from Mexico City are beautiful.
I have a woman friend from Mexico City.
Is my friend beautiful? [25]
To most schooled people, the answer to this problem seems obvious, but adolescents and adults who have had little or no exposure to the institutions of formal schooling do not find it obvious at all. They tend to answer the question more pragmatically, on the basis of women they know personally ("My friend from Mexico City is very kind, but she is not beautiful"). The way questions like this are answered in different cultures are related to years of schooling, not to basic intelligence, conclude the researchers.
Parents Show Children How to Think
These are just a few of the many ways in which parents and caregivers directly influence the ways in which children learn to think. Does this mean that conscientious parents need to sit down and plan a course in problem-solving for their children? Or perhaps, if they are too busy to take the responsibility, sign them up for lessons? The fact is that these ways of thinking are learned and internalized because they are conveyed through everyday, emotionally cushioned and meaningful experiences with a close, respected adult.
Mealtime conversations, for example, have always been prime time for communication, not only for ways of thinking but also of values about what it is important to think about. Even such subtle attitudes as whether children are expected to ask questions of adults or whether people talk about ideas as well as about what they bought at the mall can make a big difference in the way children approach school activities. These days, though, thoughtful family dinner-table conversations are on their way to joining the dinosaur category even in many middle and upper middle class homes.
Other adult-child activities -- cooking, relaxing, playing games, doing errands, working with tools, cleaning the house, visiting a parent's office, or pursuing real-life projects together -- are also natural means through which these mental habits are learned. One of the reasons that school success, in all walks of life, is inversely related to the amount of time spent watching television may be that minimal TV viewing forces grown-ups and children to tune into each other's thoughts and activities. Children in severely disadvantaged homes, on the contrary, tend to watch more television; as we have seen, it offers precious little scaffolding for academic habits of mind.
Disadvantages in models of thinking are obviously not restricted to the children of the poor. Since I know this book is most likely to be read by parents of the middle or upper middle class, I would like to stretch this point with one personal experience.
This year I spent a lovely fall afternoon with some friends who live in a modest house in a rural area that has recently become the setting for a number of large, expensive new homes. The husband, a math teacher, had confided to me that he was beginning to feel self-conscious because he suddenly realized, observing his new neighbors, that he couldn't afford to give his son many of the advantages of their children. He admitted to particularly uneasy feelings when he watched his son's new friends being trundled off to their expensive schools, camps, computer and music lessons, etc.
On the day I visited, this dad and his son were heavily engaged in a tactical war with the family dog, an accomplished escape artist who had systematically broken out of every pen ever constructed for her. Armed with tool kit, boards, and wire mesh, they spent the entire afternoon contriving an escape-proof enclosure. As his wife and I sat in the yard, enjoying the autumn sun, I observed them reasoning together. "But Dad, if we ... she might" "What do you think will happen if ... ?" "Why don't we try because ... "
As an unregenerate speculator about growing brains, I found myself having visions of pathways being forged between the hemispheres as parent and child talked about and physically manipulated the three-dimensional problem at hand. Their efforts inevitably linked verbal and visual-spatial systems in the way the brain learns best -- with a firsthand problem. When one solution didn't work, the son got frustrated and wanted to give up, but his father patiently suggested they try yet another approach, while I fancied prefrontal neurons joyously reaching out to each other to strengthen systems for planning, attention, and problem-solving.
Meanwhile, on the large grounds next door, another youngster of about the same age amused himself for the entire afternoon zooming at top speed -- and top volume -- around house, stable, and swimming pool on a four-wheeled motorized vehicle that he propelled by pushing a pedal.
"Yeah," said my friend's son with just a trace of envy in his voice. "He rides it all year-round. His mom's usually at a meeting or something, but sometimes his dad takes him out to play golf with him on the weekends. Their maid doesn't speak much English, so she never even makes him do his homework."
"It's really a shame," my friend remarked. "His parents are so worried about that child. He's quite intelligent but they found out he has a learning disability. They have to send him to a special school because he got such poor grades and couldn't concentrate long enough to do his assignments."
"Learning disadvantaged" children are found everywhere.