Extending the Evaluation of the Effects of Early Enrichment

ALEXANDER DRESCHER (Albany Medical College): Do you feel that 0.5 h/week may provide the placebo effect of a caring and concerned adult, rather than any other educational phenomenon? Dr. RICHMOND: I think this is an important issue. Many of the home ‘tutoring’ programs that are currently in process, that of WEIKART and several others, stem from the concern over the importance of parent involvement. The impact programs have on parents, and what it does to their attitudes and care of the child, may indeed be the important issues. These are some of the problems that remain to be solved. This suggests that we need alternate programs to explore a variety of approaches. MARSHALL KLAUS (Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio): Historically, it has been of interest to see what is important in pediatrics and how pediatrics has changed over the years. What does the teacher usually do during the half-hour? Dr. RICHMOND : First, I would suggest that I do not know that we should generalize from this half-hour. Remember, in the program it was the lead teacher who knew these children well and who visited the children at home. I think that the emotional factors as well as the content of what was presented would be extremely important. I also preface my comments by indicating that our numbers are small and we could rely on only one highly skilled tutor. Also, I might say that this was a dimension of the program that was not originally planned. In our early days we were not heavily invested in home tutoring. We were rather invested in the group care program, so that at the time we undertook this we did not have an available pool of tutors. We, therefore, used the teacher who was the most skilled and who knew these children, to go into the home. LEONARD M. LINDE (University of California Medical Center, Los Angeles, Calif.): I have been working this past year with the disadvantaged student as he applies for medical school, and one of the problems that we have encountered is that the tests are made up by advantaged people. I am wondering if the disadvantages student is not learning some other kinds of skills that allow him to cope with his own environment, miserable as it may be, that may be missed in the testing. In other words, how do you test for what this disadvantaged child has to know to get along? And is it possible that the tests, made up by advantaged people are merely testing something that advantaged children learn? Dr. RICHMOND : I think this is a very important question, and certainly relates to the whole matter of the testing of cognitive function. Certainly, no one has been successful in developing a test that is free of cultural bias. We use tests that are the best that we have. We do feel, and other data that we have concerning social and psychological functioning of these children indicates, that there are many other gains beyond the cognitive. As a matter of fact, ZIGLER and BUTTERWORTH, in New Haven, and others have become very interested not only in following cognitive function, but also in learning something more about motivation. If we achieve cognitive gains and do not build in motivation for continued learning we have significant losses as a consequence. As you point out, we are not suggesting that these children are incapable of learning. But they may be incapable of learning what is required of them in the one social institution that we require all of them to attend, the schools. We made that judgement in the middle of the last century, and we are programming some of our children to fail in those institutions. CHARLES D.COOK (New Haven, Conn.): We have heard a good bit about the interrelationship between nutrition and growth and intelligence. I wonder if you have any information about the growth of these children, so that we could see the relation between the developmental quotient that you measured and their growth. Dr. RICHMOND : We do have such data. I am not prepared to comment on it at this time, however. The nutrition of our children generally was reasonably good. That is, we have not encountered any striking deviations. Although we are dealing with quite a low income population, nutritionally they seem to in rather good condition. HANIA W. RIS (University of Wisconsin Medical School, Madison, Wisc.): Are you planning to use the television program ‘Sesame Street’ as an enrichment program for the preschooler? This is one of the most creative and imaginative educational programs for childre which is at the same time highly entertaining. It is also viewed with delight by adults. This 1-h program is aired on educational stations as well as by some commercial stations; 80% of these stations are showing it twice a day. It has been estimated that 80% of Boston's preschool children are watching it. One may speculate that the program has a great impact on the child's motivation to learn creatively and joyfully. Dr. RICHMOND: Efforts are being made to try to evaluate this program. I am not in a position to comment on it very fully, since I have had no direct involvement with the program. This is a good example of the mass media having made a good effort to utilize professional opinion, both in the design of the program and in efforts to evaluate it. I anticipate that we will be getting some data from the planners and producers of the program.