Activists across the United States have been pressing for every American child to receive early education, hoping this will advocate some of the literacy issues in schoolchildren. Unfortunately, experts in the field of child development claim that a preschool setting is only half of the solution. Fingers are pointing at the increasing gap between children of low-income households and those whose families make more. As a comparison, Next Generation, an advocacy group for improving the lives of children, stated that low-income children have a vocabulary of 500 words by age three while their peers are coming in at 1,100 words.
The Word Gap
This is known as the word gap and it is only partially coming from the fact that some children do not attend preschool. It is also holding back lower income children from their full potential in reading and writing skills. Education can serve to bring children on an even playing field with each other in later years, but that education needs to reach beyond the classroom. While it is a good idea for all children to receive preschool education, advocates and educators should work to help parents realize that their child’s learning needs to be extended into the home. As stated on Karen Jean Matsko’s blog,
“ If a student makes it out of their formal schooling only semi-literate, their passage into adulthood is painfully crippled. All the social programs in the world won’t be able to stabilize that person’s life as much as the confidence that being a competent and literate adult would.”
The message is painfully clear. Parents need to step in and start talking to their children on a daily basis. Even if a parent does not read to their children regularly, simply talking to a child will enrich their vocabulary every single day. Through the Next Generation’s “Too Small to Fail” initiative, parents are being educated on the value and importance of simply talking to their children every single day. No matter what age, children have the ability to listen and interpret our words. Talking to the children will extend their education outside preschool and into the home, it’s free, and it’s very simple to complete.
This article was written by Claire Dawson