The Role of Preschool in Childhood Development

Discussed in this article: NYTimes: How an Oregon Measure for Universal Preschool Could Be a National Model

Suzuki Board member and retired physician Mark Bauer shared the above article with me. I truly believe that quality preschool like our Suzuki Preschool makes a huge difference to how children will be able to cope and actually succeed when they start Kindergarten.

Our preschool addresses two important factors: 1) kids who are ages three to five are developing their verbal skills, so being with other children accelerates their development, and 2) children below the age of six have very strong auditory skills that are often not put to their best use. A further practical feature is that parents most often have to work and having quality childcare facilitates the closing of the economic divide. And of course, our preschool offers Suzuki music, and this age group is ideal for our methodology.

It is known that babies in utero develop the sense of hearing first and can actually begin to distinguish the mother's voice at this very early stage. Babies who are sung to, read to, and spoken to respond well to the world around them. It is thus natural that Suzuki music lessons begins with developing these auditory skills through the back and forth of imitating the teacher's musical playing as the "mother tongue" approach to learning music. In our Suzuki Preschool, we have regular music classes based upon the Suzuki Early Childhood Education curriculum that utilizes a well researched repertoire to develop the sense of beat, rhythm and pitch. It also develops the skills of call and response, patience in taking turns, and responding with focused attention. These are all qualities that then transfer into the Suzuki Preschool classroom as our preschool teachers are working on the alphabet--hard and soft consonants, long and short vowels--and eventually phonics which leads to many of our Preschool graduates already reading or on the cusp of being readers.

So many of our Suzuki principles of learning are natural to the development of the child. Indeed, the training our teachers receive is with the child's development in mind. I truly believe that quality early childhood education makes a difference to the future success of these students in kindergarten and beyond. Furthermore, the learning of a classical music instrument and the Suzuki approach to developing this learning transfer to the academic challenges of high school and post-secondary education. This was Dr. Suzuki's belief that all children can make beautiful music, and we have a responsibility to develop their human character through giving our children from birth a positive and nurturing learning environment. A brighter future will be had if this early childhood education would become universal to all our children.

Sachiko Isihara
Executive Director