School Readiness
The Importance of School Readiness
All fields of discipline agree that school readiness is the first step to success in life.
“On a purely economic basis, it makes a lot of sense to invest in the young”
concluded Dr. James J. Heckman, PhD,
winner of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2000
and currently the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago
Dr. Heckman began his research by investigating the economic return of job retraining programs for steel workers. He realized that those programs were largely ineffective because it was more difficult for steelworkers to learn new skills at a later age and because there were fewer years to recoup the cost of retraining. He then analyzed the investments made in early childhood programs and learned that, at the same cost there are far greater gains to be had when children are younger. Dr. Heckman came to believe that one can make a bigger difference and have more of an impact with younger children because the social skills they learn in the very early years set a pattern for acquiring life skills later.
Dr. Heckman states in his discussion: “Learning starts in infancy, long before formal education begins, and continues throughout life. Recent research in psychology and cognition demonstrates how vitally important the early preschool years are for skill formation. Significantly, this is a time when human ability and motivation are shaped by families and non-institutional environments. Early learning begets later learning and early success breeds later success, just as early failure breeds later failure. Success or failure at this stage lays the foundation for success or failure in school, which in turn leads to success or failure in post-school learning. …The best evidence suggests that learning begets learning, that early investments in learning are effective. As a society, we cannot afford to postpone investing in children until they become adults, not can we wait until they reach school age—at time when it may be to late to intervene.
