Poor kids, rich brains

The world is in our brains. A kid's world isn't outside his head in the house he grows up in, as poor as his parents' means. Its limited by his brain's habits. If you can expand the way he thinks, the amount and type of information his brain is accustomed to taking in by the time he's three or four, when his prefrontal cortex fully develops and starts biasing what his sensory brain learns, you can change his world, for life.

That's what Jeff Canada is proving now in Harlem with his Baby College program. I heard a great "This American Life" story about it on my bike ride to school last week. The goal of the 9-week program on parenting, for 10,000 infants and their disadvantaged parents in Harlem, is to pull children out of poverty not by helping change their parents' financial or educational situation, but by giving poor kids the benefits of informed parenting. Helping poor parents give their infants rich educations. Rich brains.

A developmental psych study in Kansas City in the 80's showed that the children of college educated professionals hear 20 million more words by age three than the children of parents on welfare. 20 million words: that's the difference that mattered most in predicting the kids' future success in school. Not their parents' education level, not income. Words. The kinds of language heard by children of educated parents is different too. Of the words educated parents said to their children from age 0 to 3, 500,000 were positive, words of encouragement, praise-- "Nice Elmo picture!", "Yes! That is a cool truck!", "O? You like grasshoppers? Me too."-- whereas 80,000 were negative: criticism, scolding. Children of parents on welfare heard pretty much the opposite language pattern: 200,000 negative words of criticism, yelling, reprimanding, scolding, for every 80,000 words of encouragement.

It's easy to imagine how such different environments might shape a kid's brain and attitudes, might affect his cognitive development in dramatic ways. If a kid only hears a small number of words from his parents, mostly negative, mostly criticism, I imagine he learns to think negatively and passively, to believe he doesn't have agency over his life. I'm no good. I'm powerless to change my situation. My world is shaped by others. I imagine he'd learn to fear rather than wonder, to fight with or run from authority figures rather than be curious. When on the other hand, the kid who's been encouraged by his folks, read aloud to, stimulated, thinks: I'm a superhero. I can do anything. If I'm in a bad place, I can fix it; I'm accountable and able. I'm responsible for my life and can shape my own future. He's curious, engaged with his world. This kid has learned to fish for knowledge, and he'll be fishing the rest of his life.

The idea of success in learning and life being connected to attitudes reminds me of the Japanese words 積極性　(sekkyokusei) and 消極性 (syoukyokusei). Sekkyokusei means enthusiasm, positivity, optimism, but also "drive" and "enterprising spirit." Its opposite, syoukyokusei, means negative or passive. I like these words because they emphasize that curiosity and effort, enthusiasm and hope, energy and attitude are not soft skills. They're the mental soil that makes success and growth possible.

Those attitudes, that sekkyokusei spirit of confidence, drive, and curiosity, of engaging with the world rather than rejecting or fearing it, can be planted early in a kid's head by parents or teachers. But if it doesn't get planted, according to psychologists who study this stuff, it will be hard for the kid to learn forever, even when he becomes an adult. He will grow up, will develop physically, but his mind will be stuck.

"Non-cognitive factors" matter in learning: patience, motivation, self-control, discipline, organizational skills, confidence. Very basic, learned logic. If a kid doesn't learn the right thought patterns, how to teach himself, and the right attitude toward learning- an open, engaged, un-intimidated approach, a comfort with abstraction- then no amount of retrospective teaching will get through to him. The books you show him will not be the same books read by an educated brain. The facts you teach him will not be the same facts. Knowledge will be gray and scary, not colorful and attractive. The technicolor world of ideas for him will be forever in black and white. Our worlds are not all the same world.

But if we can give impoverished kids enthusiasm for learning, if we can give them that confidence, drive, and flexible way of thinking, by, say, teaching them a foreign language while their brains are still developing... then they will be equipped to say yes to learning later. To open themselves to a world wider and deeper, through books.

I've got the same hope for my rural Japanese kids. Japan is a developed country but the kids I teach in Yakage come from poor, rural homes. Most of their parents make their living farming rice and tobacco, in the paddies along the Oda river that I bike past on my way to school, or as carpenters, or factory workers. When I see my students with their parents at the supermarket, Marunaka, or on the train, I'm often shocked. The parents are not much older than me often, and these kids are 6 to 12. One of my best 6th grade students told me that his mother was 21 when she had him, and his father was 17. The adults are often missing lots of teeth, which goes for lots of the students too. (Dental care was one major surprise for me in rural Japan. Most people, teachers, administrators, politicians alike, have some artificial teeth in their mouths that are a different color than white- bronze or brownish usually- crooked teeth or a few missing). Anyway, the parents of my bright-eyed kids are often smoking, dressed sloppily in old clothes. Once I saw a dad who smelled boozey. Most of them have probably never been outside of Japan, and many don't have college educations. It's legal in Japan to quit going to school after junior high (9th grade), and my impression is that plenty of students go this route, quitting to go to trade school to study carpentry, metalwork or hairdressing.

Yakage has a huge number of beauty shops. Some run by the young moms of my kids. Kaho, one of my best 6th javascript:void(0)grade students last year, told me in the "Jobs" lesson that she wants to be a beautician when she grows up, like her mom and grandma in Yakage.

My goal is to motivate some of the Kahos in my classes to dream bigger, beyond Yakage, beyond Japan. Some of their English is really wonderful. I've got hope.