The Myth of the First Three Years: A New Understanding of Early Brain Development and Lifelong Learning Book

Recently (late 2013) several books have come out debunking the exaggerated misinterpretations of "brain science." This book was way ahead of its time in 1999. The author does what science writers should do, going back to the original research papers to see what the evidence shows. Unfortunately, the writing style is not great, with tons of repetition, etc. This is a shame because overall, he makes a convincing case that zero-3 pronouncements and policies are not based on much.

Of course, the bigger issue is that the "brain science" doesn't really matter for policy. What matters is what actually works. We need to look at evidence from studies of interventions and their outcomes, regardless of the theories behind them.

Here the picture is murkier, with things like the Abecedarian program showing some impact but not enough to impress the author: the thing is a few IQ points isn't much at an individual level but shifting the average IQ for a population by a few points does make a big deal. The test of his general hypothesis would have been to show that good programs that start after age 3 (at school age, for example) can erase differences between rich and poor kids as well as or better than 0-3 programs, but he doesn't really get into that.