Soft focus on learning

Providence has won another grant to improve education for the very young in city schools. The $3 million to teach soft skills follows the public school system’s recently begun effort to improve toddlers’ home environment for vocabulary.

The Mind in the Making program will teach parents and teachers to work on seven “soft skills” that are important preconditions to learning for kids. They are: focus, self-control, sharing, empathy, reasoning, acceptance of challenges and communication.

That sounds like a tall order, given that many adults have yet to master those skills. And indeed, the schools are stepping in precisely because, in too many cases, families have not done their own job of preparing their children to enter school.

The program will be run through the registration department, linking to families as they register 5-year-olds for kindergarten. Ready to Learn, a program operated by the Providence Plan, expects to reach 2,580 families, 240 teachers and 160 other school personnel over the next four years.

The money comes from a $290 million initiative of the Family Engagement in Education Act, sponsored by Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.). Mr. Reed said the classes involved will “give parents and teachers a common language as they focus on the social, emotional and academic development of children in these early critical years.”

While much of it seems elemental, recent brain research has highlighted the importance of these soft skills. Providence’s embrace of very early learning fits squarely into the city and state effort to found an economic sector that will promote profitable initiative in science, medicine and research.

Children who can focus well are a key ingredient, ultimately, in any such effort — and if they grow up in Providence, all the better.