Ed School Project Will Chart, Study Infant Development

A two-month-old School of Education program designed to chart the social, emotional, physical and mental development of infants born in the last 10 months of 1973 has enrolled between 35 and 40 families.

Burton L. White, assistant professor of Education, said yesterday that the project will also educate parents on the subleties of infant development.

"The first order of business is to take the first and most fundamental system--the family--and help it to do the best possible," White, one of the principal investigators for the program, explained.

The families come primarily from the Brookline area, although White said that black and Spanish-speaking families from Boston will supplement the program.

"Brookline really selected us," White said. "The Brookline school superintendent [Robert Sperber] found out about the program, and became very interested."

The program, called Brookline Early Education Project (BEEP), operates primarily by word of mouth, White said. He cited three methods of soliciting families--hospital maternity wards, pediatricians and the school system.

White said that the maternity ward angle was more effective than the other two. "Pediatricians are just too busy and mothers with children in school generaaly aren't having babies," he said.

White said that he thought first-time mothers were probably more suitable than mothers with three or four children.

BEEP got underway in September 1971 when it received planning funds from foundations and other sources. Additional money to implement the project came through in September 1972, and in March 1973, the program distributed its first set of instructions.

Member families receive unlimited access to BEEP resources, including films and reading collections on infant and child development.

Pediatricians and psychologists will administer extensive health and education examinations, intended to supplement the work of the family physicians