Valuing Children

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This morning I took Stella and Brando, my Humane Society Specials, to the dog park for their hour of running, chasing tennis balls, and playing. A family without dogs wandered in. A man and his wife (evidently) and three little boys who were probably two, three and maybe seven. My dogs have never been around children. Their only reaction when I’m walking them on a leash has been to bark wildly and go into their bucking bronco routine when they see little kids. My own fault, no doubt. I’m not alpha male enough. When one of the little boys ran towards my dogs, I told the man I didn't know how they would act around little kids. He was pretty blasé. When I said I certainly didn’t want the kids to be bitten, he looked surprised. He obviously hadn’t thought of that.

At least ten other dogs roamed the park, and he apparently didn’t know any of the dogs, their reactions, or their owners. Despite big-time liability insurance, I would never get over the guilt if Stella or Brando bit a child. Stella is Australian Shepherd-ish, and aggressively herds if I let her. I didn’t want her or Brando snapping or nipping to get the little boys to form a circle, so I put their gentle leads on them and we left. The parents seemed sanguine about the possibility of their kids being bitten. Does this mean they don’t value their kids? Probably not. But the parents didn’t show that they cherish their boys, either.

I sometimes think we don’t really value children in the United States. For some they are fashion accessories: "Look at my cute child; look at my new Prada purse." We say we want only the best for our children, certainly. But that applies as long as it isn’t too much work. We don’t want to be bothered by them or the people who care for them (in whatever capacity).

When I was a child (here we go, old fart stories), if I misbehaved away from home (I was a perfect child so that seldom happened), I knew my parents would punish me. (One time my dad used a board to spank both me and my sister, although as I think about it she was in another room and she may have gotten off lightly.) Today, if a child misbehaves, it is someone else’s fault. "The teacher needs to give each of the thirty children in class more individual attention. The rules are wrong. This perfect child would never do that. The system is has it in for a particular child for whatever reason." It all adds up to the fact that we frequently don’t love our children enough to make them live up to pretty minimal standards. We give in for fear that children won’t like us any more.

And no doubt that is a rational fear. There were times I didn’t like my parents (particularly when my dad spanked me with a board), but I always respected them for doing the best they could with the resources they had available to them. Despite all their flaws, and my own, they raised me to be a reasonably responsible, generally functional adult.

Children are not necessarily supposed to like their parents. Parents are certainly not supposed to be their kids’ buddies. The parents’ job is to turn children into responsible, mature human beings and then help them move away from home.

In a larger context, we see Americans’ disdain for children in our educational systems. In Illinois, as in most other states I suspect, each school district raises money to educate children by assessing local taxes with the state chipping a few bucks into the pot. Each local district then raises taxes based on the wealth of that district. In the North Shore suburbs of Chicago, real estate values are astronomical and the amount spent per pupil in individual districts can be as much as five times what districts in poor, downstate Illinois districts spend. A teacher who makes well over $100k is not unusual on the North Shore. (I hasten to add that well-paid teachers earn their compensation.) Teacher salaries, on the other hand, top out at far less than half that in poverty-stricken areas of the state. The disparity means that rich kids get better educations than poor kids. No good teacher is in it for the money (or the vacations!). But no teacher can afford to work at such a salary and still pay off college loans, provide a decent house for a family, and still put food on the table.

Children from wealthy families, in general, already have greater opportunities. They have books and magazines in their homes, they travel, they get tutoring if the children even appear to need it, they have better nutrition, better health care, better lives over all. They have parents who both push them and value education. Many poor children don’t have any of these. If society cared about children (as opposed to “my child”), this would change.

In Illinois, the governor recently proposed universal children's health care, despite their parents’ income level. In a recent issue of the local bi-weekly rag, a columnist suggested that we can't afford to provide decent health care for children. Why, the next thing we would have to give them is adequate nutrition in the form of breakfasts. And what would it cost us? I was flabbergasted. Gob-smacked. If we don’t provide adequate health care and nutrition for children, what will it cost us? Their brains cannot develop properly, and we create an underclass. How much more than breakfast or healthcare or education does it cost to keep a prisoner? How much does it cost if we don’t develop every person to live at his or her potential?

Perhaps the columnist was exhibiting not-so-subtle racism. Perhaps this is an idea she didn’t think through. But she was so facile when she wrote it that she obviously believes children (other than her own), do not deserve a chance. She decried the cost of providing nutrition and health care for the children of Illinois whose parents cannot already provide it. I think we could divert cash from Halliburton and the War (Conflict? Unrest? Invasion? Crusade? Politicians’ Pocket Lining? What do we call it these days?) in Iraq to more than take care of poor children in Illinois. Indeed, in every state.

It is time that we become the global village that it takes to raise a child. That doesn’t necessarily mean we throw money at them although judicious applications of cash work well. It does mean that we talk with children (and young adults), protect them, set limits for them, give them opportunities, read to and with them, help them learn, advocate for them and cherish our children, all our children. They are the future. That’s trite, but also true. Children are the future. Children are our future.

Education in America

Every once in a while my well-meaning, conservative cousin in Florida sends me a posting about the terrible educational system in America. Why, in 1890, teachers were paragons of virtue (and provided their own firewood or coal), and students knew how many rods were in a mile, how many pecks in a bushel, and how many acres in a hectare -- or vice versa. I'm sure students did know these things, and in many ways they learned more while they were in school. Of course, well over 50 per cent of them dropped out before they finished high school. As a teacher (who spent a good portion of my salary on school supplies for students in lieu of wood or coal for the furnace), I was more than a little irritated to receive these postings because what kids needed to know in 1890 just isn't relevant today.

On the other hand, she made a point, albeit unknowingly.

Students enrolled in school then may well have had more practical knowledge then than they have now. In 1890 teachers had control of their classrooms. The legislature and the president didn't impose curricula on teachers, they didn't send out scripts for every day in the classroom that imposed the same design on students who range from much challenged and bored to exceptionally gifted and bored. And they didn't require class time for days of standardized tests and days of preparation for the tests, days that eat up weeks of instuctional time. Nor did the legislatures interrupt the school year with specious holidays so that very few five-day weeks are available for continuity of instruction.

As teachers, we like sheep have gone astray by not standing up for ourselves and saying, "I am a professional educator, not a tall child." Good teachers (and we should not hire and keep ones who are not!) can design clear curricula and teach their students what they need to know in ways that are meaningful to them. And reading is the key. Teachers do not need to have more administrators per teacher than teachers per child. Nor do they need constant interruptions in the school year. Teachers need the support of the community, especially parents.

Parents have an obligation to their children. They must read to them and read in front of them. They must teach them how to behave alone and in groups, and how get along with other people. They must back their children's teachers and perhaps occasionally bite their tongues. They and their children must learn to expect no preferential treatment because they are rich or because they are poor, because they are black or because they are white, because they are smart or because they are not.

But most of all, teachers must be allowed to teach, to find the great joy in their profession and experience the love of their charges. Without the micromanagement of their "superiors."