To increase the number of children ready for kindergarten.
I was probably a troublesome child with my curiosity, because I asked a lot of questions and I loved to just sit in a room with grown people talking, anyone talking. My mother has told me how I would sit between two people, setting off for a ride in the car, as we used to do on Sunday, and say, “Now start talking!” My ears would just open like morning glories.
~Eudora Welty From Conversations with Eudora Welty
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Rationale: Recent rapid, far reaching changes in the conditions of child-rearing constitute a powerful challenge to families and other institutions to adapt to new circumstances, as researchers like David Hamburg and Mel Levine have shown. The recent outpouring of research on brain development and learning stresses that different minds learn differently, demonstrating the importance of the availability of diverse strategies to move children toward improved school performance and career success and challenging those who still believe in a one-size-fits-all educational philosophy. Caring parents, concerned citizens, and other appropriate community resources and services that enable children “to grow up healthy and vigorous, inquiring and problem solving, decent, and constructive” must be clearly available, visible, and usable, thereby creating in families “a tangible basis for hope . . . with the perception of opportunity and paths toward its fulfillment” (David Hamburg).
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