Sunday, January 12, 2020

Prevention is better than treatment – Dr.Jack Shonkoff



Corroborative Evidence (5) – Dr. Jack Shonkoff


"So the sobering message here is that if children don't have the right experiences during these sensitive periods for the development of a variety of skills, including many cognitive and language capacities, that's a burden that those kids are going to carry; the sensitive period is over, and it's going to be harder for them."


“There’s no question that there are children with serious learning problems that have to do with the fact that their brain works very differently from the usual brain. There are also children who have problems learning because their brain is working like most brains work, but they’re in environments that are putting unusual stresses on their ability to learn. And in most cases it’s some combination of both.”

“So the messages that come out of that basic principle of brain development is that getting things right the first time is better than trying to fix them later, trying to adapt to something that was not developed in the best way at the time that it was supposed to be developed.”

“So I think the best way to think about this is to say that prevention is better than treatment, of earlier is better than later, but it’s never too late in most cases to get kids back on track. And all of this, basically, is because there is this capacity of the nervous system to adapt, for the brain to be plastic, that is greatest when the brain is immature and young, and less as the brain gets older.” (Jack Shonkoff)

Why has David Boulton not done anything with what all these guys have told him in the interviews?


One has to be an idiot not to understand what is being said by Dr.Shonkoff above. I have been saying exactly the same thing since 2010. 


Many children are simply classified as dyslexic when in fact they are instructional casualties.


These kids are different from the majority who appear to learn any which way they are taught to read. 


However, these kids who shut down are the smart kids who are then considered ‘creative’ and made to take up art and sculpturing. Imagine what they would have become if they had been able to read.


Note: Dr. Jack Shonkoff, was the Chair, National Scientific Council on the Developing Child: when the interview was conducted by David Boulton.

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