• A backlog in language skills; particularly when the language spoken at home is different than the one taught at school.
• A backlog in fine motor skills; when children have not learned to draw or using scissors. These skills are necessary for learning.
• A cognitive backlog. Normally children learn by playing in their natural surroundings: ‘Look, Mummy’s putting two plates on the table …one…two’ Children from a less favoured neighbourhood lack the knowledge other children have learned at home.

• A child learns by interacting with its surroundings. These surroundings have a strong impact on the child’s development. The surroundings determine which learning experiences a child has. The ‘surroundings’ has a broad variety of meanings: it contains the people who raise the child, the parents and other family members, and also its physical surroundings.
  
  
• If guardians and educators communicate little with a child and if there little availability of learning materials (books, puzzles, etc), there is a considerable risk a child will have to deal with backlogs in its linguistic development. Children from a lower social-economic background will therefore often have backlogs in language acquisition.

Education provides access to full participation in society.

No education means no chance to get a diploma, and often leads to illiteracy. Not being able to read is the reason many doors remain closed. No diploma often means depending on help from others and little financial security, so there will be a lack in possibilities to chance one’s living conditions.

Oscar Lewis’ study Culture of Poverty shows that children who have not been educated before they were seven years of age, are incapable of overcoming the choke hold of poverty. All educational efforts after they have reached the age of seven almost always prove to be futile. All the more reason to concentrate on educating preschool children.

Children are trusting, curious and faithful to adults. This means greater responsibilities from adults – also in the things they tell children.

Children have a right to develop themselves. Therefore it is in the children’s interest not to receive less assistance, but more. A school therefore has to offer more educational opportunities and linguistic remedial teaching.

It is also in the interest of society to overcome this vicious cycle. Children get a chance to study and obtain diplomas, and as a result have a future. These children in their turn will later have more possibilities stimulating their children to attend school.