The Relationship between Physical Growth and Infant Behavioral Development in Rural Guatemala

Abstract

Data from a longitudinal study in progress were used to investigate the relationships between intellectual ability prior to schooling opportunities and characteristics of family and home environment, and elementary school attendance and performance in 3 rural Guatemalan communities.Pre-schooling mental test performances, family SES level, and indices of parental values concerning education were all associated with attending or not attending school.Length of school attendance was predicted by pre-schooling mental test scores for girls and by family SES level and parental values for boys.Age at first enrollment was predicted by both pre-schooling mental test scores and family SES level for both sexes.School grades were predicted by pre-schooling mental test scores and intellectual stimulation provided in the home but not by family SES level.It is argued that schooled and nonschooled peers in most semiliterate communities are unlikely to be originally comparable, and that conclusions based on previous studies of the effects of formal schooling on intellectual development must be reconsidered.In Western industrialized countries, going to school has the same inevitability for children that death and taxes have for their parents.In developing countries, school attendance is far from inevitable.Although some children do enroll in school, sizable numbers of their peers receive no formal instruction.Knowing who goes to school under such circumstances is important for those concerned with national development.It is also important to psychologists, who have recognized that such settings represent natural designs through which the effects of formal instruction on cognitive development may be studied.The information from psychological studies of schooling in such settings is contradictory.Some investigators report basic cognitive deficits among unschooled children (Greenfield & Bruner 1966 [working in Senegal]; Goodnow & Bethon 1966 [in Hong Kong]; Evans & Segall 1969, and Okonji 1971 [in Uganda]; Owoc 1973 [in Nigeria]; Page 1973 [in South Africa]).Others, employing similar tasks, do not (Fahrmeier 1975, and Price-Williams 1961, 1962 [in Nigeria]; Mermelstein & Shulman 1967 [in a southern U.S. community which closed schools rather than integrate them]).The data of Cole and his co-workers from Liberia (e.g., Cole, Gay, Glick, & Sharp 1971; Cole & Scribner 1974; Scribner & Cole 1973) and more recently from Yucatan (Sharp, Cole, & Lave, Note 1) suggest that schooled and unschooled children do not differ in basic cognitive abilities, but do differ in the way these abilities get organized into learning and problem-solving strategies.The issue of whether or not formal schooling has generalized effects on cognitive functioning, as Greenfield and Bruner (1966) and Scribner and Cole (1973) among others have argued, is unlikely ever to be resolved on the basis of studies of the kind performed to date.