One of the best investments we can ever make is not some great stock or real estate opportunity, but investing in preschool for our children and the children in our community. While investing in preschools probably sounds rather mundane, sometimes it’s the not so impressive or grand opportunities right under our noses that produce the sweetest and most lasting fruit. Research from distinguished universities not only confirm what we’d intuitively believe about how quality preschool experiences help children during their school years, they underscore benefits far beyond what most of us might imagine.
According to the Harvard University Center of the Developing Child, the neurological development of children’s brains grow much, much faster in their earliest years of life than at any other time in their lives. With “more than a million neural connections formed in the brains of children every second”, the architecture of a child’s brain is formed early on, laying the foundation for all learning, health and behavior that follows. Decades of neuroscience and behavioral research indicate that language and cognitive capabilities are established early in children’s lives, and that “remediation efforts” later in life, are often less effective.
In 2000, Noble prize winning economist James Heckman found that providing high quality preschool to children “pays extremely high returns down the road.” “It not only improves cognitive abilities but also crucial behavioral traits like sociability, motivation and self-esteem.” Heckman found that the benefits of providing educationally enriching environments to three and four year olds, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, “improved participant education, IQ and health, as well as reduced involvement in crime”, not only during their school years, but all the way up to age 35. Heckman’s argument is that providing stimulating educational environments to young children “when their brains are the most malleable”, provides the highest rate of return among investments in education. This research begs the question, why aren’t we as parents, grandparents and a community focusing and investing more on preschools?
Interviews with preschool teachers in our area confirm the above findings. Preschool experiences help children in their social and emotional development, as well as pre-academic learning like letters, numbers and word sounds. Preschool children also learn how to behave in a classroom setting, which can take several weeks away from learning in kindergarten if they have not participated in preschool.
While it’s easy to allow the enormous cost of a college education capture our imagination, conversations and our financial planning, neuroscience, educational and economic research all tell us that investing in preschool pays the highest dividends for our children and community. According to James Heckman, here in America, we have put investment in education “on its head”. The greatest return on investment in education comes not from investing in a college education, but investing in preschool. Sometimes the best investment we can make in our children is not preparing for what we might do for them someday, but cultivating the wondrous potential within them, here and now, while the opportunity is most ripe.