Supplemental education in early childhood may be associated with professional achievement

To investigate which extracurricular lessons medical doctors and medical students received in early childhood and to compare the results to a similarly aged representative sample.

This retrospective questionnaire-based study investigated the prevalence of supplemental early education, along with professional outcomes later in life. The study compared two samples: First, as a proxy for "professional success", medical students and residents (n = 147) were asked to recall which extracurricular lessons they had taken when pre-school aged. This was contrasted to a control sample representative of the general population in Japan. Included extracurricular lessons were: "keyboard/piano", "Japanese calligraphy", "abacus use", "swimming", and "foreign language." Frequencies were compared and tested using contingency tables and the Chi-squared test. P-values < 0.05 were considered significant.

The control sample reported a lower rate (32.7%) of extracurricular activities than medical students did (51.6%, χ²_{(df=1, n=147)} = 13.5, p < 0.001). The proportion of medical students receiving keyboard lessons during their pre-school years was significantly higher (43.5%) than that of the general population (9.1%, χ²_{(df=1, n=147)} = 65.2, p < 0.001). Similar, but less robust, results were observed with Japanese calligraphy (11.5% vs. 3.1%, χ²_{(df=1, n=147)}=11.3, p=0.001), abacus use (4.1% vs. 0.4%, χ²_{(df=1, n=147)} = 7.4, p=0.007), and swimming (33.3% vs. 22.0%, χ²_{(df=1, n=147)} = 6.1, p = 0.013).

Our results suggest that, in Japan, early supplementary education, including keyboard lessons, is associated with professional success later in life. Future research is warranted to elucidate whether there is a causal link between early extracurricular education and professional outcomes.