ABSTRACT

The effortless ease with which young children learn often disguises the range and complexity of their learning. We have always known that the pre-school years are important in terms of intellectual as well as social and physical development, and we are now finding out more about the spectacular changes that occur at this time. We know, for instance, that the structure of the brain changes, not according to a pre-determined plan but by the way it is used, by the information it extracts from the environment, and by the experiences it encounters which arouse interest and curiosity. And the size and quality of this growth are not just a matter of genetic inheritance, they are inextricably and powerfully bound up with the opportunities we provide for the developing brain to hook up with, and share in the consciousness of older and more experienced brains. New meanings, imaginative expansion and greater understanding are nudged into being by such interactions, and the foundations of symbolic thought are laid. By the age of five a child will have set in place more than 50 per cent of its intellectual growth. Consider the first five years of Jenny’s life.