For all our talk about family values, we have yet to adopt policies that are supportive of children.
Marches and rallies are nothing unusual in Washington, D.C., but next Saturday, June 1, there will be a gathering the likes of which the city has never seen. Children of all colors and from every ethnic and socio-economic group and every part of the U.S. will gather on the Mall with their mothers and fathers, grandparents, guardians, aunts and uncles -- and teachers. The atmosphere will probably be more like a gigantic fair or church picnic than the usual Washington rally. The occasion is Stand for Children Day, sponsored by the Children's Defense Fund (CDF). AFT will be there, along with representatives from more than 3,000 other sponsoring organizations that cut across the political spectrum. But numbers are not the point. The point is to focus national attention on America's children. Marian Wright Edelman, CDF founder and president, says the rally is a "nonpartisan call to action" in the name of "improving the quality of life of children."
It may seem odd that we need a national rally to point out that America's children are in trouble. Most people are aware that our youngest citizens are also our poorest and most threatened. They have seen figures showing, for example, that 24 percent of U.S. children under six are living in poverty and about a quarter of all babies are born to unmarried women. The Children's Defense Fund also tells us that:
Every 9 seconds, a child drops out of school;
Every 10 seconds, a child is reported abused or neglected;
Every 14 seconds, a child is arrested;
Every minute, a baby is born to a teen mother.
And there is more. But the rally testifies to the fact that Americans have not yet grasped the seriousness of children's problems. For all our talk about family values, we have yet to adopt policies that are supportive of children. Why is that?
Irving Harris, a well-known businessman, philanthropist, and child advocate, says it is because U.S. policies toward children are still essentially "humanitarian." In other words, we consider helping children a matter of choice or good will. So if we run short of money or inclination, well, it is our option to cut back on our efforts. (Or if being humanitarian doesn't seem to be working very well, we can take a turn at being punitive.)
Harris thinks we are kidding ourselves. In Raised in Jeopardy: Public and Private Action for America's Children, which Yale University Press is publishing this summer, Harris talks about the importance of seeing things in practical as well as humanitarian terms. When large numbers of children are born and live in poverty, when they suffer abuse and neglect and fail to get their basic needs met, their lives are likely to be blighted. But that is not merely a problem for those children and their parents -- and something for the rest of us to feel bad about. It has profound practical consequences -- social, economic, and political -- for everyone.
Harris points to the impact problems like these have on educating all our students. Researchers have found, for example, that the brain develops most rapidly during a child's first year. What does it mean when children entering kindergarten have not gotten the food and health care and stimulation they need during that crucial first year? And what does it mean if this deprivation has continued throughout their pre-school years? These children are likely to begin school far behind their more fortunate classmates both socially and cognitively. Maybe they will catch up, but they are more likely to fall further behind until they stop trying. And, Harris says, when they do leave school, chances are good that they will be unemployed and unemployable. The personal consequences for these kids, who never had a decent chance, are enormous. But they are not the only ones who pay for their lack of readiness. So, probably, do all the other children in their classes. Kindergarten teachers Harris talked to said they could handle one such child without "shortchanging" the others, but if they had more than one, the learning of every child in the class suffered.
Indeed, as Harris points out, everybody pays because we do not have policies that acknowledge the cycle of poverty into which these kids have been born. That includes taxpayers who wonder where their education dollars are going and businesses that worry about being able to hire qualified graduates.
So when the people who attend the rally -- and the rest of us who are inspired by them -- take a stand for children, we shouldn't do it just to prove that we are good people. We need to take Irving Harris' s message about the practical costs of our humanitarian attitude to heart. The rally can be a first step, one of awareness, but then people need to go home and get to work.