...that William F. Buckley, Jr., spoke no English until he was seven years old? Spanish was his first language, French his second. We read volumes about the need to offer pre-K in large part to ensure that a pupil begins Kindergarten??in possession of words the number of which does not substantially trail that of those at the beck and call of most of his classmates. I wonder, though, if a child whose vocabulary is paltry at age five is really in such bad shape, or if his skimpy vocabulary merely bespeaks other disadvantages that pre-K can't help. Surely Amber knows the answers, and I hope she'll tell them to me. And before anyone gets all huffy about this: No, I don't think Buckley's magical story should be the foundation on which we build early education houses. It merely made me think, is all, which happens infrequently enough to be worthy of documentation.
