be suppressed dramatically during the second and third years of life. Researchers claim that the human personality is formed during the first two years of life, and during the first three years children learn the basic skills they will use in all their later learning both at home and at school. Once over the age of three, children continue to expand on existing knowledge of the world. It is generally acknowledged that young people from poorer socioeconomic backgrounds tend to do less well in our education system. That’s observed not just in New Zealand, but also in Australia, Britain and America. In an attempt to overcome that educational underachievement, a nationwide program called ‘Headstart’ was launched in the United States in 1965. A lot of money was poured into it. It took children into preschool institutions at the age of three and was supposed to help the children of poorer families succeed in school. Despite substantial funding, results have been disappointing. It is thought that there are two explanations for this. First, the program began too late. Many children who entered it at the age of three were already behind their peers in language and measurable intelligence. Second, the parents were not involved. At the end of each day, ‘Headstart’ children returned to the same disadvantaged home environment. As a result of the growing research evidence of the importance of the first three years of a child’s life and the disappointing results from ‘Headstart’, a pilot program was launched in Missouri in the US that focused on parents as the child’s first teachers. The ‘Missouri’ program was predicated on research showing that working with the family, rather than bypassing the parents, is the most effective way of helping children get off to the best possible start in life. The fouryear pilot study included 380 families who were about to have their first child and who represented a crosssection
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