I found it, the book is called
What's going on in there? How the brain and mind develop in the first five years of life by Lise Eliot.
The book is basically a literature review of everything under the sun related to development. It is very interesting.
There is a section on schooling which basically says that people with higher IQ"S stay in school longer as are more motivated to stick with it, but also the more years of schooling you have the higher your IQ and gives many examples of documented times where IQ's lowered due to lack of schooling (Nazi occupation, school closures in 1960's southern US during ratial integration) and children who have had no schooling (Appalachian children) can fall into the retarded range by adolscence.
Then goes on to talk about preschool, does it increase intelligence?
Evidence that high quality daycare inproves cognitive and academic performance for children in disadvantaged situation, but less so for the middleclass, although some new research shows some advantage for some kind of formal preschooling.
But....
quote
"There is however one note of caution to sound about early childhood education. This is not a time for heavy academic instuction. ......there is no evidence that children benefit in teh long run from early formal instruction in school subjects. In fact, it may even do some harm. In one study, researchers compared kindergartners who had attended strongly academic and less academically oriented preschools, and they found no difference in their cognitive ability or school performance. They did, however, find that the children from the more academic preschools tended to have greater anxiety about testing and to view school less postively than those from the less academic preschools. In other words, there may be a real danger in pushing academic achievement too early.
Preschool should be an enticemnet-a way to ease children into a school setting and foster a deep love for learnng.......It is not the time to emphasize achievement."
So I was not quite right in what I said about scores lower when they are older. I must have read that somewhere else, or a different part of this book. I will look and see what else I can find.
They also talk about the difference in math scores between America and Asia, being related to difference in parenting, how americans give less emphasis on learning math, less emphasis on homework, and help with homework less than asian parents(asian parents in asia they mean), and the fine lines between higher expectations and pressure. Very interesting.
