ONE of the leading experts in early childhood education is in Bermuda this week to spread the word: the crucial element in successful early education is language.

Dr. Kim Wilcox, Professor of Speech-Language-Hearing (SPLH) at the University of Kansas at Lawrence, took the opportunity to reunite with his former student Mary Giordano, Speech and Language Pathologist at educational consultants Bercon Ltd, and the Chatterbox Pre-school and Child Care Centre.

Ms Giordano was in the audience of 60 at Salvation Army Hall on Wednesday night to hear Dr. Wilcox give a "community presentation" on "the role of pre-school education in language development".

Dr. Wilcox talked exclusively to the about his visit to the island, and his role in the development of the Language Acquisition programme which forms the structure and curriculum of the new non-profit Chatterbox operation on Church Road in Southampton.

"It was a great turnout on Wednesday for the presentation," said Dr. Wilcox, "and I think it went really well. Parents, family members, educators, professionals from around the island came out, and it really spoke to me about the quality of the culture you have here in Bermuda, and the commitment that people on the island have to their children."

Professor Wilcox's talk focused on how children come to learn language, and what parents and educators can do to help them in that task.

"Much of what we do as professionals and in society generally for young children is construct classroom environments," said Dr.Wilcox, "and historically, pre-school environments have focused on general knowledge as their defining framework.

"What we are suggesting is that we can use language to define what a curriculum could look like. That's arguably the most important thing that children do in those first four or five years of life; it's what sets the stage for everything that comes after that."

Dr. Wilcox holds the view that language skills are integral to the outcome of many of the most important aspects of life.

"The language connection determines friendships, educational outcomes, and career prospects: it's the social fabric that ties us together," he said. "So to the extent we can help children master language, it opens many doors. There is evidence to indicate that children of comparable intellect end up in different positions in life, largely because of language skills. They are that defining in life."

Dr. Wilcox's presentation to the audience at the Salvation Army Hall centred on the description of a special kind of pre-school that was developed over many years in the language laboratories at the University of Kansas, where Dr. Wilcox is Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, which encompasses the SPLH Department. "The pre-school we created at the university was organised with language as the defining principle," said Dr. Wilcox.

"It has been operating for 20 years; we spent the first five years developing it, and the next five testing it thoroughly. Since then, we have spent a lot of time talking to a lot of people around the world about how this model works.

"I think that one of the points that had a big impact on the audience here was that our classroom has children in it who have language needs, has children in it who speak another language, not English, has children in it who are typically developing in every fashion, some of them very talented young children, but after a year or two in our pre-school, they improve in language skills faster than other children.

"We take children with normally developing language skills and move them ahead in language faster than other children. So it's not a programme just for children with language needs, it's a programme for language development in all children. That allows us to be organised in a community, in a school system, with government support, in a really complete environment."

The professor explained that the reference in the Language Acquisition Pre-schools (LAP) curriculum to working "on targeted language structures incorporated into play activities" was just another way of saying that the system attempts to make learning language a natural component of children's play.

"If you think of someone who has difficulties, whether it's in reading or math or geography, or in language, a teacher's role is to find those places where you are having difficulty, and help you with those targets," the professor said.

"With language, if you have trouble getting a child to understand that verbs have to agree with nouns ? 'she is going' ? we can embed that in a play action, so that the children understand that the dolls are getting into the bus to visit granma, and they have a more understandable and fun way of understanding what 'the doll is going to visit' means, and the social aspect of that learning is so important to young children."

Professor Wilcox and his colleagues in the language laboratory in Kansas found that some young children learned better in a play setting than sitting passively listening to a teacher.

"They learn better and faster in this engaged environment, and they know what's up; children know very clearly if they are being isolated to be assisted. They are all very sensitive to what their status is in a group, and that affects things. Even in our classroom, where we take no one aside, where every child is treated equally, the children still exhibit behaviours that let us know they know the differences.

"Children who have language problems act differently from those who don't. They talk differently, they approach different people in the classroom; as three year olds, it's part of how they see themselves. These are things we are keen to address: self-confidence, self-image, and role in society."

The professor explained why the presence of children with normal language skills was important in the LAP structure, and that parents should not be concerned that their children would be negatively affected by sharing a classroom with children with language development problems.

"Children with normal skills play a natural role as communication partners; they simply enrich the whole room. Their language floods the room and helps create this social atmosphere. What we do is take all of that language and try to focus it in particular directions.

"There is no pre-school child who can't learn more language, and the things we do to help one group naturally helps the others. The children with normal skills are there to enrich the environment, and it is heart-warming to see some of the normal kids sit with the other children and help them understand how to say some things."

Dr. Wilcox explained that of all of the people to whom the SPLH department was indebted, no supporters of the pioneering efforts were more important than the parents of children with normal skills who allowed their children to take part in the early pre-school laboratory work, uncertain whether their children's education would be negatively affected by children who were less developed.

"We have been running our programme for 20 years, and we owe so many people: the federal government for funding us, the university for supporting us, the public school system for partnering with us, but the people I give most credit to are the parents of the children who were typically developing when we started in 1985. They simply had faith in us that what we were doing would turn out well, but there was no data, no evidence.

"These parents entrusted their youngsters' lives to us, but fortunately, we could go back to these parents after ten years and assure them that, far from being a hindrance to their children, it had been a benefit. We could say that their children had acquired language than all of the other children in the country, because our standardised tests proved it.

"The reasons are clear to us: if you put a three year old child in a typical pre-school, you know they are going to spend a lot of time working on basic concepts like shapes and sizes, and colours and animals. We put our children in a pre-school where the focus is on language, and that 's the key difference.

"For parents who want their children to have language help, and children who need that help, we can provide that as effectively as any system, but we do it in a very typical environment for the child. The children don't need to meet with a therapist three times a week, or go to some private office to sit and do drill work; they just go to pre-school like everyone else, and in my heart, that's the better way."

Dr. Wilcox explained that an early motivation in his work was a feeling, shared by senior colleagues, that the segregation of children with developmental needs in separate classes was not the best way to tackle the problem. "We thought there had to be a better way to do this. The only time we take any child out of the room is for testing, but otherwise, everything happens in the room, so this sense of who a child is, as a peer, is simply taken for granted."

DR. Wilcox was born in Sault Ste. Marie in upper Michigan, on the Canadian border, and he attended Michigan State as an undergraduate physics major with an interest in acoustics who went on to earn a degree in audiology and speech science.

"I came to speech because I was looking for some application for that science. I learned that I could study acoustics and work with children, and that sounded pretty good to me. What I had focused on most of my career was the speech production part: how the sound waves are created, and how the muscles move to make the sound. The first thing a three year-old has to figure out is the breaks between words."

He attended Purdue University in Indiana and earned a master's degree and a PhD, and joined the Speech and Hearing department at the University of Missouri for four years before joining the faculty of the University of Kansas at Lawrence in 1984. He was appointed Chair of the department in 1988, and spent ten years in that role, interrupted by a year's fellowship at Indiana University at Bloomington, working on strategic planning.

Dr. Wilcox's work with children was interrupted when he was asked to join the Kansas State Board of Regents, and took charge of the state's higher education system.

"It was the best thing; we basically created a new higher education system for the state, and that was a rare opportunity. I learned a lot dealing with the State legislature and the Governor about funding, and dealing with the media, but I never really enjoyed it; it just wasn't my cup of tea. When I got the chance to go back to campus, I jumped at it. The SPLH is ranked about seventh nationally, out of about 320 programmes, and we are best known for language development."

Dr. Wilcox and the university had special support from former Senate majority leader and presidential candidate Bob Dole, a son of Russell, Kansas who was badly injured during World War Two, and has always been committed to research into disabilities of any kind. Consequently, Dr. Wilcox and his colleagues at SPLH work in the new and handsomely-appointed Dole Human Development Centre.

Dr. Wilcox did not want to be too specific about any advice he would have for the Chatterbox Pre-school, the only LAP facility in Bermuda, being run by Angela Fubler, his former University of Missouri student Mary Giordano and teacher Patrice Williams, but he was drawn to give some general advice.

"Chatterbox already has the two most important things going for them: a sense of direction, and passion. These people I have met have a passion for what they do, and they are doing the right things. My advice would be more to the general community, to think about this opportunity and how it can be taken advantage of."