Head Start?
The Terman children were capable of being good students, and in grade school most of them excelled in literature, composition, history, science, and debate. But they were average or worse in art, shop, and penmanship. That is, Dr. Terman was the first scientist to find real evidence for the common stereotype that all those future doctors, lawyers, and engineers, whatever their other talents, would be sorely lacking in the domain of legible script.
Philip, a precocious but fidgety boy, was enrolled in first grade right at age five. Because they were academically well qualified, a number of the Terman children, like Philip, started school early or skipped a grade.
In contrast, Linda went to kindergarten at age five and started first grade at the normal, traditional age of six, even though she was a very bright and mature girl. Would Linda have been better off if she had gotten a jump on formal schooling? Could something like starting school early or late affect long-term health and longevity?
Traditionally, in America, children attend kindergarten at age five and enter the first grade at age six. (This is not directly dependent on whether they have attended preschool.) Not surprisingly, approximately half the Terman participants entered first grade and started formal schooling at about age six. But a significant number entered school at an earlier age—at age five or even a bit younger than that. Their parents thought they were bright and “ready” for school—they wanted their children to learn as much as possible as soon as possible. Linda’s mother, like some other parents, was in no hurry. And she didn’t want Linda to be younger than her classmates.
Was Linda’s mother on to something or was she being overly cautious? On the one hand, kids who are younger than their classmates can develop low self-esteem and find themselves without adequate grounding for the adolescent scene when they enter middle school. On the other hand, intellectually advanced kids who enter school with peers their own age can become bored and develop behavior problems as a result. So, led by the efforts of Peggy Kern, then a graduate student, we tracked the effects of the starting age on health and longevity across the decades.34
We found that those Terman participants who started school at a very early age tended to encounter difficulties throughout their lives. For example, the early-starting boys like Philip were somewhat less likely to grow up to be very well-adjusted adults, and the early-starting girls were more likely to later abuse alcohol.
And surprisingly enough, their age at entering school predicted the subjects’ longevity, too. The children who started first grade at age five were at higher risk of dying early, and those who started school on schedule (at age six) lived longer. Just as we had discovered that an element of childhood personality—conscientiousness—was very relevant to health decades later, we now saw that something as seemingly unrelated to health as a school starting age could also tell us something about a person’s chances of living a long life.
There was no single ingredient that explained the increased risk for those who started school at a younger-than-average age. Indeed, many of these precocious Terman participants did live long and healthy lives. But it was a mark that something could go very wrong if the children were pushed too far, too fast. Because relating to classmates is so important for children, an out-of-sync start can launch some of them down some erratic paths. We concluded that parents should not enroll their kids at age five in an attempt to give them an advantage. Getting an early start—jumping ahead of one’s peers—is a dead-end myth.
What About Skipping Ahead?
Linda was not an early starter, but she was an easy starter. She did well in all of her classes, even penmanship. She had many friends, and her teacher observed that she was unselfish and had a level of common sense that was “above average.” She enjoyed her dolls and playing hopscotch. Thus, she was a “traditionalist” both in school age and activities. Linda also liked to study—everything seemed easy for her to learn. Linda in fact accelerated in her third-grade year, completing two grades in that same year and skipping on to fifth grade. Was that a good idea?
Because the Terman children entered school at different ages, and because some skipped or repeated grades, they had very different grade school experiences. At the end of eighth grade, some students were the same age as their classmates, while others were older or younger. We wondered if the onset of adolescence was the key turning point. But it wasn’t: age match with peers as a teenager was not significantly related to mortality risk; it was age at school entry that made the difference. Linda, for example, remained popular and well-adjusted, continued to do well in school, and appeared to be no worse off for having sprinted through her third- and fourth-grade years.
Playtime
So maybe the problem with early school entry was pushy parents, relentlessly pressing their preschoolers to get ahead. To check, we considered that perhaps what really mattered was the age at which the child learned to read. In fact, about a third of the children learned to read before first grade, especially those who had more preschool instruction and whose parents were better educated and of a higher occupational status. Did it matter? To long life, no. Being a very early reader was associated with somewhat poorer mental adjustment later in life, but the age at which the child started reading was not related to lifelong mortality risk. Being bright and precocious was not the problem. The problem was starting formal schooling too young.
To understand these findings, let’s consider Philip. A bright boy, even compared to other Terman subjects, Philip was a front-runner in many areas. He moved from a bottle to solid food at an earlier age than most infants, his teeth came in early, and he walked and talked earlier than other children. Even his worries seemed adultlike. He was energetic, outgoing, and clearly very smart, so it’s not surprising that his mother wanted to channel this energy and brilliance into something more constructive than taking apart his toys and racing pell-mell up and down the stairs. She may have also hoped that the structured environment of the classroom would help make Philip more responsible and diligent—he was friendly and popular but not very conscientious or persistent.
Unfortunately her plan didn’t work. By entering formal instruction at a very early age, Philip lost the unstructured playtime that psychologists know to be so important to healthy development. Philip’s performance in school was competent but uneven. In some areas (those that interested him) his teacher rated him as “very superior” but in subjects he cared less about, he was only average. His attitude in his early school years suggested that he was “anxious to outdistance others, to progress or excel” but despite this, he exhibited little followthrough in areas that failed to draw his attention. He was generally well liked by his peers, and not often teased, but his teacher remarked that he tended to “seek attention by behavior.” Accelerating the pace of life for this precocious and anxiety-prone child reinforced unhealthy levels of stress.
We know now (although it was not understood then) that the brains of children, and even teenagers, are still developing. Philip’s problems with impulse control and focus were not likely to be helped by a competitive classroom environment. And, being one of the youngest in the class, he probably felt the need to prove himself.
Higher Education
Education is a great predictor of future income in our society—college graduates earn much more than high school graduates, and those with graduate degrees tend to do better than those without. There is also very good evidence from various studies that socioeconomic status is relevant to health. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that getting more education will make you live longer.
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For our study of early education and long life, see: M. L. Kern and H. S. Friedman, “Early Educational Milestones as Predictors of Lifelong Academic Achievement, Midlife Adjustment, and Longevity,”