Literature Review Early Childhood Brain Development

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Early Childhood Education Literature Review: Early Childhood Brain Development
The article “Childhood Brain Development, The Educational Achievement Gap, and Cognitive Enhancement”, written by Fabrice Jotterand talks about the impacts of poverty or socioeconomic factors on early childhood brain development and academic success by evaluating the neuroscientific facts associating impacts of poverty on a child’s cognitive development or the “neuroscience of poverty.” The second argument the author makes is a rebuttal to an earlier article “Not Just ‘Study Drugs’ For the Rich” by Keisha Shantel Ray, which encouraged the use of cognitive enhances in addressing poor educational performance among children in poor settings (Ray 29). The article supplies an alternative approach, which the author calls “the clinical ideal” and provides ethical indicators that could necessitate prudent and ethical use of brain enhancers (Jotterand 1). In “clinical ideal,” the author permits the use of cognitive enhancers only if they can enhance the mental, physical, and social capabilities and the overall life quality of individuals whose mental faculties have been impaired (Jotterand 6). In summary, while the article is not an outright rejection of cognitive stimulants among socially disadvantaged learners, it seeks to offer a more nuanced tactic.
There several questions Jotterand’s article tends to raise. First, how can one account for higher academic achievements among learners in poor settings and poor performance in children from middle and high-income backgrounds? While it is logical that good nutrition significantly contributes to brain development in early childhood, a host of perhaps other factors results in such disparities in observations where learners from poor settings...