ABSTRACT
Learning efficiency, or learning problems, among pre-schoolers and infants probably has very little directly to do with material or social deprivation. This chapter examines the idea of the monitored development which may provide bases for action on a wider front, if conditions are favourable, and what difficulties lie in the way of this deliberate, researched form of innovation. It begins with the patronage of administrators and professional educators and, at least at first, these projects have been compensatory in that they take the education system's formal experiences as valid aims for infants. Although there are other stages at which deliberate intervention in education and development can be undertaken profitably on an experimental basis, the years of early infancy seem to be crucial and to offer the possibility of a wide application of methods suited to children of all types of ability and origin.
