Figure 1.--What surprised us about pre-prep children is the level of concentration which they were capable. We had always thought that younger children were easily distracted. These children when given appropriate tasks were capable of astonishing focus. |
There are many differences in the pre-prep program from school to school. The most obvious is that many schools today have pre-preps and take younger children. This was not the case before World War II. Thus there may be programs for children as young as 3-4 years of age, althouh 5 years is probably more common. Often the pre-prep is coeducational regardless of the gender orientation of the prep school itself. The inovation of pre-preps is a relatively new development that has become very common in recent years. The pre-prep is run as a separate program and usually separate facilities. Some schools even have separate locations. Often the pre-prep children did not wear the school uniform, although this varied from school to school. What surprised us about pre-prep children is the level of concentration which they were capable. We had always thought that younger children were easily distracted. These children when given appropriate tasks were capable of astonishing focus.
