30 MILLION WORD PROJECT - MAYBE OVERSTATED??

A few months ago while listening to the Freakonomics podcast, I came across an episode that explored an education experiment in Chicago Heights, aimed at understanding what factors help children learn and accelerate their comprehension.  The project, in it's simplest form focused on creating a fair and equitable learning environment for kids of Black, Hispanic, and White households, while also incentivizing parents to do more work with their kids at home.  By doing so, the experiment looked at how this equalization would impact the educational outcome of the various groups.  The learning indicated that while White and Hispanic kids really saw great educational gains, Black kids did not.  It was a disappointing outcome and left many scratching their heads.  One of the theories that arose from this experience and others like it is this idea that what happens at the home has a major impact on kids cognitive and reading skills...even before they are at normal reading ages.  The first 3 years of life play a pivotal role in building neural connections as our brain is being built into maturity.  So watching TV at home, screaming at kids, not having dialogue - some believe - can have negative and even long lasting affects on kids cognitive well being.  Queue the 30 Million Word Initiative, which in a nutshell is that kids born into poverty, on average, heard 30 Million fewer words than their affluent peers by the time they were 3 years old.  The 30 Million Word Initiative essentially aims to help parents communicate more effectively and directly with their children to build better neuron connections.  The communication is intentionally focused a diversity and larger array of word usage.  NPR recently produced an article that challenges this notion of 30 Million words - stating that it's probably more like 4 Million just in case you really got scared about keeping word count at home.  But the most important thing is that there is science that shows that talking to your kids more and engaging in dialogue actually does improve their learning abilities, and doing so at a young age is critical.  

We link the Freakonomics podcast here in the article.

To read the full NPR analysis visit - https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/06/01/615188051/lets-stop-talking-about-the-30-million-word-gap

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/06/01/615188051/lets-stop-talking-about-the-30-million-word-gap