Critical Analysis Of James Heckman's Promoting Social Mobility

In “Promoting Social Mobility,” James Heckman asserts that children are increasingly being born into disadvantaged families and face a growing risk of becoming unskilled, indigent, and socially troubled adults. During the first several years of life, he argues, cognitive and non-cognitive skills develop the most rapidly, so this is the optimal time to intervene in these children’s lives, implementing programs that foster mental development and stability. Although he notes the benefits of cognitive skills, Heckman favors children’s acquisition of non-cognitive skills because they are more effective and contributive to cognitive achievement, social success, and a dynamic economy. While his commitment to helping underprivileged children by intervening …show more content…
These skills, while still demanding intellectual exertion, are not necessarily utilized directly in academia. Crucial to progress in careers, personal goals, and a fulfilling life, ignoring them is a mistake. Heckman misclassifies attention and planning as non-cognitive, which confuses his position and creates a lack of clarity throughout his argument. This observation seems trivial, but it is worth mentioning because his misclassification of some disregards the fact that it is systematic skills that beget non-cognitive skills, not vice versa. In fact, it is difficult to learn a non-cognitive skill without some incorporation of systematic …show more content…
He claims that in Perry, non-cognitive traits were mainly targeted and that activities for the children largely entailed planning, executing, and collaboratively evaluating tasks each day, instilling social skills in children (Heckman). It also emphasized language, literacy, numbers, space, time, classification, movement, music, creating patterns and series, and creative representation, which included role play and sensory perception (“Program Profile”). This is at once striking, as the majority of these skills are systematic abilities, so rather than attributing non-cognitive abilities to the program’s success, it is fair to postulate that Perry’s promising results are due to a focus on systematic skills in a collaborative community that fueled both non-cognitive and cognitive