We Need to Fix This Now

In May 2019, Intergroup initiated an awareness campaign about learning gaps in schools, and solutions to related problems.

The key learnings from the piece are as follows:

Learning Gaps
We have massive learning gaps in our schools, and those gaps are getting worse because we have growing numbers of children being born into the low end of those gaps, and their lives will be damaged in permanent ways by not being able to do basic things that need to be done for both employment and education

We Can Help Every Child
We can give every child from every group the right support and the right interactions in the first weeks, months, and years of life to do well in school. We actually finally do know what to do to make those gaps disappear. We have become a lot smarter about those issues and processes over the last few years.

The Neuron Connectivity Timeframes Are the Same for Every Child from Every Group and We All Need to Understand That Process and That Timeframe
The neurons connect in the brain of every child in the first weeks, months, and years of life. That basic process starts immediately for every child. It involves direct interactions with adults for each child. We need to be extremely honest with ourselves about that process and about how we can use it to help every child from every group in America.

Many Communities are in Trouble Now
Ignorance has been a major part of the problem because too many key people in each of our communities have actually simply not known or understood the foundational brain science that sets up the context for those gaps for our children in all of those communities and those schools.

Reading Has A Massive Impact on Neuron Connections for Children
An Ohio State research team estimated that the children who were read to every day would hear 296,000 words spoken to them by age five — and they calculated that the children who had no books read at all would only hear 4,662 words spoken to them in those same key five years.

We Need A Strategy of Win-Win for All Groups Instead of Win-Lose or Lose-Lose
We need inter group Peace now that is based on our shared beliefs and our shared values, rather than on our specific ethnicities or our separate races.

We Need to Make Learning Readiness for Every Child at Age Four A National Priority
We need to make learning readiness levels for every child at age four a major national priority and we need to make improving age four learning readiness levels for all children a priority for every community in our country.

Please check out the article, in length here: https://www.intergroupinstitute.org/blog/we-need-to-fix-this-now/