Jonah Lehrer details the benefits of a Pre-school education from a long term study on Wired.com. While children receive a small increase in IQ, pre-school students tend to show greater academic success than their non-pre-schooled classmates. So if not a major increase in intelligence, what happened? Called non-cognitive traits, the pre-schooled children excelled at "self-control, persistence and grit." These attributes contribute to the success of the students. As a society, we blame dropouts on "stupid kids". As a teacher, I have seen many smart kids fail in and eventually out of high school. Those students suffered from the rigidity of the school experience and gave up with adversity.
The benefits of Pre-school extend past high school successes. In the highlighted study, the pre-schooled group were more likely to keep their jobs and less likely to become divorced. Even pre-school children that did dropout of high school are paid the same or more than non-pre-schoolers that received a GED. Self-control and persistence impresses most employers and can help everyone. These attitudes must be taught early and often. Pre-school seems like a great place to start the road to success.
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