{"id":4058,"date":"2024-09-02T12:02:19","date_gmt":"2024-09-02T10:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rivistaeco.com\/?p=4058"},"modified":"2024-09-02T12:02:19","modified_gmt":"2024-09-02T10:02:19","slug":"inequalities-start-in-kindergarten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rivistaeco.com\/en\/2024\/09\/02\/inequalities-start-in-kindergarten\/","title":{"rendered":"Inequalities Start in Kindergarten\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Income inequalities and the educational and professional levels of parents seem to manifest themselves as early as kindergarten, when children’s attitudes and cognitive tools for facing life are formed. According to research, this is where interventions and resources for social cohesion need to be concentrated.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Every adult has memories of classmates from their years at kindergarten or primary school. Some of these showed completely ordinary attitudes toward play or classroom activities; others seemed strangely quiet and withdrawn; still others were turbulent. Often, these characteristics persisted throughout their school years, and sometimes, when we could follow our classmates into further studies and life, we realised that something of their childhood personality remained decidedly present in their adult attitudes, achievements, or plans.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, when we meet those same people with whom we shared kindergarten games or an early classroom, we feel we know more about them than others do. Just by having known them in childhood, it seems we understand the deep core of their personality better than their current colleagues, friends, or even spouses.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, this is an illusion. Throughout life, people evolve, learn, challenge themselves, and constantly transform. At any stage of life, every encounter or activity influences and changes us. Believing we hold the keys to someone else just because we saw them at age five with all their passions and insecurities would simply be shortsighted and arrogant.<\/span><\/p>\n

Childhood: A Crucial Age<\/b><\/p>\n

Yet those memories and their comparison with the long span of adult life raise some questions. They become hard to ignore today in a society where inequalities in income or wealth, education, job security, and access to quality healthcare for oneself or one’s children tend to emerge early in life and then increase.<\/span><\/p>\n

These are brutal and ancient questions, not at all original. What remains of childhood attitudes in the adults we know? How significant are the social circumstances of birth and early years in defining a person’s path? How do these circumstances influence decades of learning, work, social integration, cohabitation, and family choices? And what causes these attitudes: biology, chance, early or later life experiences, social class, family influence, school attendance?<\/span><\/p>\n

Such questions are too broad to resolve here. But even if these questions are excessively large and complex, they remain at the core of the work we present. The immediate goal is not to provide definitive answers. On the contrary, through a series of experimental works, we aim to gather elements for new reflections and perhaps encourage new empirical work on the same topics.<\/span><\/p>\n

The fundamental goal is more concrete. Early childhood seems crucial in forming the abilities to learn, undertake, relate to others, accept a fair amount of risk, or learn to control one’s will. Our work offers some clues: it suggests that differences in skills and psychological and social attitudes among different groups of people are already visible in the early years of life. These differences most likely precede the formation of knowledge measurable through school performance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Differences in the skills and attitudes of children aged four or five seem strongly linked to the social context in which they grow up. In forming the attitudes of preschool children and the cognitive tools with which they will face the rest of their lives, income inequalities, wealth, educational level, professional status, or social networks of parents seem to be important factors. This imprint proves deep and lasting: differences comparable to those among preschool groups seem to be widely present among teenagers in very different social contexts.<\/span><\/p>\n

The lesson to be drawn from these observations is potentially useful. If the hypotheses that emerged from our work are confirmed, we would have an additional argument to precisely target public policies, social cohesion interventions, and related resources. Concentrating educational efforts on preschool children in disadvantaged social conditions at an age when they are most perceptive and forming their attitudes could prove particularly effective. Strengthening early childhood education in low-income neighbourhoods would require substantial resources. However, the phenomena of school dropout and social and work marginalisation among young adults are a much greater burden for society: an investment aimed at preventing school dropout and mass social inactivity would be advantageous from every point of view. Especially in a country like Italy, where the proportion of people aged 15 to 29 who are not studying, working, or undergoing any training is the highest in the European Union <\/span>(this is also discussed on page XXX of this issue, ed.)<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

A Study and What a Game Can Reveal<\/b><\/p>\n

Let’s get to the merits of the investigation underlying these conclusions. We started with the hypothesis that belonging to a certain social class tends to influence people’s attitudes from the very earliest years of life. Naturally, it is impossible to measure all visible characteristics in preschool children, for example, in teenagers. The latter can simply be asked questions. With four- or five-year-olds, you can propose doing what they do best: play. Through simple games, we tried to test three types of attitudes and skills:<\/span><\/p>\n