What if you knew a key part of your production system was so flawed that it made your products easily breakable and prone to malfunction? Maybe a basic programming flaw made your software crash easily. Or a bad axle made your cars get only 20 miles per gallon.
Wouldn’t you fix the process, even if it was expensive, just to ensure your product came out right? Surely you wouldn’t keep wasting money on a system you knew didn’t work?
Yet that, in essence, is what Jack P. Shonkoff, a national authority on neurobiology and early childhood policy, says America is doing with its youngest and most vulnerable children: ignoring mounds of evidence about what works and what doesn’t, at an enormous expense.
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At stake, Shonkoff told an audience at Brown University on Monday, is nothing short of the future of our work force. Children who don’t get the care, nurturing and stimulation they need when they’re toddlers and preschoolers don’t develop their brains in the way they should, and that can hinder them, potentially, for a lifetime.
Add trauma to the mix – from severe poverty, an alcoholic or drug-addicted parent, repeated abuse – and the harm can be even more devastating, Shonkoff said. Yet there’s also plenty of evidence that immature brains are “highly adaptable,” and good interventions, especially at a young age, can help those children overcome those adversities.
A newborn can lose half his brain and go on to have a normal life, Shonkoff noted, but brain circuits stabilize with age, making them increasingly difficult to alter. As a result, the longer you wait to get children the help they need, the harder it will be to correct the problems.
“It’s more efficient from the perspective of brain development and public spending to get it right the first time,” Shonkoff said.
Shonkoff, a pediatrician and professor of human development and social policy at Brandeis University, spoke at Brown at the invitation of Rhode Island Kids Count and Brown’s Center for the Study of Human Development. His audience included educators, researchers and policy-makers – along with what he called an extraordinary contingent of local leaders:
U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, Rhode Island First Lady Suzanne Carcieri, Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline and Brown President Ruth J. Simmons, all of whom stayed for the full lecture.
Kennedy, who sponsored the Foundations for Learning Act, which provides grants for preschool screenings and various mental health services for children under 7, said it’s shameful that “we have more knowledge than ever, more data than ever, and yet we probably treat our children as poorly as we ever have in our history.”
Elizabeth Burke Bryant, executive director of Rhode Island Kids Count, noted that in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, she’d discovered that Providence and New Orleans have one thing in common: both have 41 percent of their children living below the poverty line.
This points to the urgency of heeding Shonkoff’s and other experts’ advice, Burke Bryant said, because there’s an “incredible link” between the economic status of children and their families and every aspect of their lives.
Shonkoff is best known for leading the team that authored a 2000 report called “From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development.” The gist of the report was that the science of children’s brain development is clear and well-established, and public policy now must catch up, for the sake of our future economy and social well-being.
Shonkoff summarized the core concepts established by science:
n Brains are built over time, and the brain circuitry develops through the interaction of a child’s genes and his early experiences. The “nature vs. nurture” debate, he said, “is a dead issue scientifically. They are inextricably intertwined.”
n Brain architecture and skills are built in a hierarchical “bottom-up” structure, with lower-level circuits and skills serving as the foundation for higher-level circuits and skills. For example, babies learn to recognize sounds, then identify words, then speak, then read, etc.
n Social, emotional and cognitive development are “highly interrelated,” and it’s “useless” to argue about which is more important. Much of the debate over reforming Head Start has focused on making it stronger academically, he noted, and that is really needed, but it can’t be done at the expense of the program’s other facets.
n Brains’ plasticity and ability to change behavior decline over time. Remediation for small children is easier and less expensive than for older children, Shonkoff said. “The most expensive end point is to pay for incarceration.”
n Relationships are the “active ingredients” of early experience, and nurturing and protective interactions “build healthy brain architecture” – not just in humans, but also in animals. Such relationships also protect children from the effects of stress, which releases toxic hormones that can impair brain development if the stress persists for too long, Shonkoff said. (Moderate, short-lived stress, on the other hand, helps build resiliency, Shonkoff said.) The harm is not irreparable, but it can give children, and the adults they grow up to be, a weaker foundation for learning, and make them prone to stress-related physical and mental illness.
“It’s part of why this health system is dealing with high rates of stress-related diseases,” he said: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, depression.
Yet research also shows that high-quality early childhood programs can help put children on the right track and help the most vulnerable overcome their trauma, Shonkoff said. But only very high-quality programs with stable, well-trained personnel matched to the needs of the children and their families seem to work, he said; lesser programs don’t make a difference.
Early childhood educators and child-care workers are so badly paid, however, that the work force is unstable and under-prepared, Shonkoff said. As a result, parents who can afford the best programs put them on a path to success, while other children fall behind.
(A report from the Economic Policy Institute and the Foundation for Child Development last month shows the U.S. early childhood work force is getting less qualified: From 1983-85 to 2002-04, the share of center-based teachers and administrators with at least a bachelor’s degree dropped from 43 percent to 30 percent, while the share with a high school education or less rose from under 25 percent to 30 percent. Among home-based early childhood educators, only one in nine has a college degree.)
The consequences may be most severe for children with serious problems, Shonkoff said, citing a 2004 study in Massachusetts that found 39 percent of preschool teachers had expelled at least one “unmanageable” child in the preceding year.
The take-home message: Americans have “a moral responsibility” to make a major change in early childhood education now, Shonkoff said. It’s a “critical investment” in our future economy and work force.
“We need new champions,” he said. “We need business executives. We need people from all along the political spectrum.”
