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The Magic of Preschool
August 20, 2010
Sometimes we conflate race with racism. I don’t think we should. Every day of my life, I’m going to wake up and be Black. Now, if that’s a hard or difficult thing, it has nothing to do with my blackness, it has to do with the environment that I’m in.
-C. Davida Ingram, Artist
An article, "How does preschool work its magic?," in Wired magazine, reviews a new paper by Flavio Cunha, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania, and James Heckman, a Nobel Laureate at the University of Chicago, on the reasons to invest in preschool education.  In the paper Cunha and Heckman discuss the findings of the Perry Preschool Study and the article summarizes....

"Interestingly, the Perry Preschool didn’t lead to a lasting boost in IQ scores.  While kids exposed to preschool got an initial bump in general intelligence, this dissipated by second grade.  Instead, preschool seemed to improve performance on a variety of 'non-cognitive' abilities, such as self-control, persistence, and grit.  While society has long obsessed over raw smarts — just look at our fixation on IQ scores — Heckman and Cunha argue that these non-cognitive traits are often more important. They note, for instance, that dependability is the trait most valued by employers, while 'perseverance, dependability, and consistency are the most important predictors of grades in school.'  Of course, these valuable skills have little or anything to do with general intelligence.  And that’s probably a good thing, since our non-cognitive traits are much more malleable, at least when interventions occur at an early age, than IQ. Preschool might not make us smarter — our intelligence is strongly shaped by our genes — but it can make us a better person, and that’s even more important."





Not Just Small Change: Fund Development for Early Childhood Programs is a fundraising guide written specifically for early childhood programs by a veteran early childhood fundraiser, Roberta Bergman.  The practical resource provides advice on...
  • Whom Can We Ask (and Keep Asking) for Money?
  • Building the Donor Base
  • Developing Relationships with Your Donors
  • Events — Yours and Theirs
  • Direct Mail
  • Online Donations
  • Grant Writing
  • Writing Foundation Proposals: Dear Mr. Gates
  • Preparing Government Grant Applications
  • Breaking New Ground: The Capital Campaign

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Comments (3)

Displaying All 3 Comments
shantha · November 18, 2010
mount carmel college
bangalore, karnataka, india, United States


It is an area that we in the developing country have a long way to go,
as early child hood education calls for a lot of scientific work. can i share and understand more about the study with the author.

Nirmal Kumar Ghosh · August 24, 2010
Shishu Vikash Kendra
Kolkata, West Bengal, India


Have you listened any story told by a child in a team ? He / She tells the
story with super I .Q. Let us observe the children .

Margaret Benson · August 20, 2010
Penn State
United States


Guess I had better read the article by Heckman and Cunha for myself, but "ouch." While it is great to remind us of the importance of our "non-cognitive traits," it is also important to remember that IQ scores are influenced by environmental factors. Growing up in a family and community with limited resources has been found to have an impact on IQ.



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