Research Attests Dangers of

Too Early Schooling

Social research may be basic (e.g., experiments, histories, tests, polls) or analytical. Basic research that generates policy and takes one's money seldom has been replicated and often is worthless. Research analysis seeks to utilise basic research. I've done basic research- both at Stanford University and the University of Colorado Medical School- and thousands of analyses.

For much of my life I, like most educators, was indifferent to educational research. I had seen tons of worthless stuff come out of universities couched in fancy statistical terms that even confused scholars. The standing joke was that doctoral students know more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.

Back in 1937-39 my wife found that most children in her Whittier, California remedial reading classes were boys (who usually mature later than girls) and a few girls who were early school entrants We began to suspect that early schooling might be destroying our children -- and our society and nation.

After serving as a city school superintendent. college and university president, and head of a Christian school system, I landed at the U.S. Office at Education. There the ideas the Congress asked us to try in U.S. schools were of little use. Nearly all were notions without basis in sound research. So when I resigned from the Office, my wife and I studied school entrance ages and eventually were forced to conclude that children should not be in formal classes before 8 to 10 or even later, as was practiced in most of America's history.

When our findings were published, Oregon Democratic Congresswoman Edith Green and New York Republican Senator James Buckley asked us to do further research and assisted in our receiving grants for the investigations.

More than 8,000 research analyses found many studies proving that older school entrants usually achieve and behave better as well as catch up and pass children who begin school at an early age. These conclusions are supported by child development factors such as vision, hearing, taste, touch, smell, brain development, cognition, co-ordination, and socialisation. We cross-fertilised these studies to determine the best ages for children to enter school.

Consider these examples:

VISION-Optometry researchers and ophthalmologists helped us analyse more than 3,000 vision studies, among them, Point Barrow Alaskans. After Alaska became a state, Eskimo children had to go to school at age 6. At ages 10 to 12, Dr. Francis Young compared their vision with Eskimo adults who hadn't gone to school. The adults rarely had myopia (abnormal nearsightedness). After 5 or 6 years of school, 68 percent of the children suffered visual damage. And when they were 6 or 8 years older, the figure was 88 percent. When Texas' school entrance age moved from 8 in 1910, to 6 or lower by 1952, myopics went from I out of 7 to 6 out of 7.

HEARING-Hearing is more important to reading than vision, yet children do not readily discriminate sounds until 8 to 10. Intersensory perception- the combination of vision, hearing, taste, touch, and smell-are not mature enough for formal school learning until at least 8 to 10.

BRAIN-Our Colorado team found that a child's brain does not lateralize (unite with two hemispheres) before 9 or 10, and myelin (brain sheathing) increases after those ages.

COGNITION-School children normally reach adult-level judgement and perception abilities around ages 15 to 20. But those taught all or mostly at home in a balanced program of warm parenting, free exploration, and industry have adult-level judgement between 8 and 12.

COORDINATION-Children vary widely here as in reading. Some are quite mature at 8 or 10, but others not until 15 or l6.

SOCIALIZATION-There are two kinds of socialisation: 1) positive, altruistic, or selfless, 3)negative, narcissistic, or selfish. Children who are with peers more than parents until about age 12 (usually in school), become peer dependent and rebel against family values, They lose self-worth, optimism, respect for parents, and lose trust in their peers. They only get along with their agemates. Peer influence is potentially even more destructive than shabby teaching. This social contagion shows up in manners, tastes, language, drugs, alcohol, sex, delinquency, violence, and suicide. It happens more because of kids' sensing indifference of parents than by attractiveness of peers.

In order to further the research in this field, we now work with more than 250 doctoral, masters, and other students in research and experimentation. For example, we balance study, work, and service where parents (1) warmly respond to their children and encourage them to explore freely along lines of their own interests, as the Smithsonian Institution suggests; (2) share cottage industries with their children, make them officers, let them write cheques to pay family bills and otherwise manage the home - also make and sell things, offer services; and (3) do good deeds for their neighbours.

Note. In the next article we will show practical applications of lessons from history and research.