Showing Up for Life by Bill Gates Sr

Author:Bill Gates, Sr. [Gates, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-385-53037-8
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2009-11-11T05:00:00+00:00

Learning Begins at Birth

Babies and young children think, observe, and reason.

They consider evidence, draw conclusions, do experiments,

solve problems, and search for the truth.

—Gopnik, Meltzoff, and Kuhl, The Scientist in the Crib

One great memory I have of my children's maternal great-grandmother, Lala, is waking up on mornings she was visiting and finding her and Kristi and Trey all piled into one bed in their pajamas reading together.

Reading aloud to each other is a tradition in our family.

On one trip we took to Disneyland, Mary and her mother, Gami, drove the family from Seattle to California, and I flew down to meet them later. They told me the long drive had gone by quickly because they all took turns reading a book about the famous racehorse Man o' War. They read aloud to each other—and then they discussed what they'd read. When I arrived, they had to tell me all about it, too.

Even though families have been reading aloud together for generations, the subject of early learning research is relatively young. I had never even heard of it until just a few years ago. I became aware of it in 2004 when a significant portion of the money requested in an education initiative was for early learning. I had to ask what it was.

Now I'm convinced early learning just might be the key to fixing education in this country.

My inquiries have convinced me that what children know—or don't know—before they ever see the inside of a classroom has a major impact on problems that can show up later on, including high school dropout rates, poor scores on student achievement tests, and the distressing matter of high school graduates who can barely read and write and who do not have the job skills required to prosper in a global economy.

Here are some facts that make the point. Children who don't attend pre-kindergarten are 70 percent more likely to be arrested by the time they're eighteen; girls who don't have positive early learning experiences are much more likely to become pregnant in their teens; more than half the children in my home state (and perhaps a comparable number in yours) are prepared only for failure the day they enter kindergarten.

Research shows that infants start learning soon after they're born. They soon recognize faces and respond to stimuli, especially love and attention; they mimic expressions on the faces they see; they laugh.

Later, they learn to enjoy being held and read to long before they comprehend a single word. I'm sure that Lala didn't realize she was an early learning instructor when she read to the kids. I'm also certain she was aware that the children were building vocabularies at an astounding rate and absorbing the fundamentals of acceptable behavior in their culture.

There is an entrance exam for kindergartners these days. A child isn't expected to understand fractions or spelling—but the better prospects will know the names of colors shown to them; they'll be able to spell a few simple words and their own names; they'll know their telephone number; a few will be able to read books written for the very young.

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