A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n

Achieving the Goals: Goal 1--All Children in America Will Start School Ready to Learn

The National Endowment for the Humanities

Of the three objectives identified under Goal 1, the Endowment's efforts are particularly focused on the first and second. The Endowment's Division of Public Programs has projects that reach preschool children and their families. The three main projects include Humanities Projects in Museums and Historical Societies, Humanities Projects in the Libraries and Archives, and Humanities Project in the Media.

Museums Program

Awards grants for the development and implementation of museum exhibitions designed to provide learning opportunities targeted at children and their families. An example of this is the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia supporting object-based play as the interpretive technique most appropriate to the museum's target age group of children ages four to seven.

Libraries Program

Awards grants to libraries and archives in support of educational projects, including many that are intended for young audiences. These projects, which range from special exhibitions to reading and discussion programs, provide opportunities for young children and their parents to benefit. The reading and discussion programs are being held at public libraries throughout the state and are involving both parents and their young children.

Media Program

Grants provided through this division has resulted in the production and airing of a wide variety of radio and television programs specifically geared to preschool youth and their families. Collateral educational materials to accompany these programs have been produced to heighten their educational impact. Among NEH-supported media productions are such programs as "Long Ago and Far Away", a television series for young children that presents dramatic productions based on children's books, folk tales, and fairy tales from around the world. There is also the radio series, "Songs Jumping in My Mouth", that employs animal characters to introduce young children to significant historical and cultural ideas.

Motheread

The state humanities councils in North Carolina, Minnesota, and California are helping parents become better teachers for their young children. In Motheread projects , parents, teachers, child-care workers, and others learn to think about stories and emotional themes to which children can respond and, in-turn, to help their children develop pre-reading skills and a love of reading. At-risk children are the ultimate beneficiaries of many of these projects, which are often situated in housing projects, day-care centers, prisons, and centers for battered woman.

PATH: Parents as Teachers of the Humanities

A program funded by the Missouri Humanities Council, that brought parents and scholars together to expand parents' appreciation of literature and to help them share an enthusiasm for reading with their children.

The Vermont Council on the Humanities is focusing its energy and resources on achieving full adult literacy in the state by the year 2000. One program the council has developed is a trilogy of reading-and-discussion series for parents of pre-school children called "Beginning with Mother Goose". Participants in each series are provided a set of age-appropriate children's books, as well as information and discussion experience which should enable them to introduce their babies and toddlers to the rhythm and rhyme of Mother Goose and to the captivating stories and pictures of Goodnight Moon and Where's Spot.

The Vermont Council is also beginning to work with a new audience-teen mothers. In this program, the mothers are invited to participate both in "Beginning with Mother Goose" programs and the council's reading-and-discussion programs for new readers. The young children of these mothers benefit, as do the mothers themselves, many of whom are likely to be low achievers in school and at risk of dropping out.

Grants awarded by NEH'S Division of Education Programs have also supported Goal 1. This division funds a variety of continuing education programs that provide opportunities for the parents of young children to engage in the texts and themes of the humanities. In turn these parents are able to share their newfound appreciation for the humanities with their children.

Mr. F. Bruce Robinson
Assistant Director
Division of Education Programs
National Endowment for the Humanities
1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Room 302
Washington, DC 20506

(202) 606-8377
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[The National Endowment for the Arts]

[National Science Foundation]