Tube off, talk on

Every child is home-schooled. Somewhere between pre-school and college, most children enter a group educational experience. Whatever their age when they enter “school,” the fact remains that first and foremost every child is home-schooled.
Within that first educational experience lies two important factors that influence each child’s future educational experience and capability: first, the amount of spoken language heard during those first few years and secondly, the quantity and quality of time spent in front of a television set.
Verbal stimulation in the home may be the single most important predictor of success in school, work and society, according to a recent article in the Arkansas Times.
That conclusion comes from the book, “Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children,” by Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley. The authors found that children of poor families get far less verbal stimulation compared to children from economically blessed homes. The difference is so much greater that the learning curve simply could not catch up, not even with the intervention of pre-school programs, according to the report.
The verbal stimulation has to originate with real people, not with television noise. Children exposed to hours of sit-coms and talk shows disliked reading and tended to read materials of a lower quality, according to a report by Neuman and Prowda (1981) about viewing habits, reading attitudes and reading materials in the homes of 8,000 students, fourth- through 12th-grades in Connecticut.
Children whose parents limited their television exposure to about an hour a day of educational programming read a higher quality of material and read more often.
Unfortunately, too often children who grow up in economically deprived homes with fewer verbal interactions also frequently end up living in homes with a constant background noise of television. When they get to school, these same children qualify for free lunches. This past year’s discussion about the quality of Arkansas’s schools as exhibited in standardized tests repeatedly returns to the one consistent ratio: the greater the number of students receiving free lunches, the lower the school’s overall scores on standardized tests.
Issues regarding school consolidation, equitable distribution of the educational dollars, and which classes and programs are the best or worst have been, and will continue to be, discussed forever. But right here and right now an inexpensive solution would begin to make a noticeable difference.
Meet at-risk families at the exit of the hospital maternity wards with children’s books and the offer of parenting classes on raising a smarter child.
In the class, stress the importance of turning off the tube and talking with children during diaper changes, while feeding them their first solids, pulling shirts over their heads or just riding in the car.
If economics necessitates day care, expect the same verbal interactions to apply: TV time limited to one or two educational programs followed with a discussion, more interactive games, books and toys.
We may not ever find the perfect solution for equitable education, but everyone can improve our state’s educational outcome if they would just put down their paper, turn off the television and talk with infants, babies and children, read them a book, play a game and engage them in a conversation.