Most of the industrialized world have recognized the value of supporting young families by providing opportunities that reduce the poverty and stress that so often lead to generation after generation of dysfunction and child abuse.

“Their methods for leveling the economic playing field start with providing all young children with healthy conditions for physical and mental development. Surprisingly, much of the research they rely on comes from America’s best universities.

The proof is that it works — these countries have broken the link of intergenerational poverty that afflicts our country.”

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If America stands for anything, it is a place where economic opportunity is available to any citizen willing to work for it. And as recently as half a century ago, that was reasonably accurate.

Now a gaping hole has penetrated that fundamental of American exceptionality. Facts have emerged proving something far different. The Nov. 14 issue of Time magazine devoted its cover story to the fading American dream.

Not only have the richest Americans run off with the majority of the wealth — now we learn that the game was rigged.

Several studies of class mobility among countries reveal that the United States trails its peers (France, Germany and Canada) in the ability of low-income children to escape poverty as adults. Countries that really put Americans to shame are the Nordic countries of Scandinavia and Finland.

Compounding the shock of this shattered American dream is the train wreck in Washington.

Our nation bleeds from festering problems due to a government in a straitjacket. Budgets don’t get passed, Wall Street doesn’t get regulated, energy policy is a farce, infrastructure is neglected, deficits aren’t managed, unemployment festers, the economy sputters, and America has lost faith in its political process.

The two parties see opposite paths to recovery, and compromise is equal to treason.

There is however, a silver lining in this lost cornerstone of American exceptionalism. The leaders of both parties could actually agree on a fundamental policy of expanded opportunity.

The door that opens to correct this lost fairness is to make access to opportunity a right of every United States citizen. Today it has deteriorated to a privilege. Kids of wealthy parents have a huge advantage, starting with health care, education, neighborhoods of affluence and parental connections of power.

What’s triggered the possibility for political peace is the debate about the spike in the upward wealth accumulation, now reaching levels last seen a century ago. Democrats and a majority of the public favor a reversal of recent income tax cuts for top earners.

Although Republicans fanatically oppose higher taxes, especially for so-called “job creator” rich people, recent prominent voices signal possible compromise.

Conservative presidential candidate Rick Santorum told his debate opponents that he’s alarmed that European children of poor families are more likely to escape poverty than are American counterparts.

Then Republican Paul Ryan, House budget chairman, addressed an audience of conservatives and argued that instead of class warfare, a better response to the huge wealth gap is “equality of opportunity so people can make the most of their lives.”

To this, the Democrats should say, “Great idea! Let’s agree opportunity is an American right, like the right to free speech and the right to vote.” How could Republicans and especially Tea Party Republicans possibly object?

Why not ask the American people? Should opportunity favor the privileged, or should it be available to all as a right? My guess is that it would be an overwhelming vote for the latter.

If opportunity is a right, then all that needs to be decided is how to make it happen. One answer is pretty simple. Do what they do in Nordic Europe. And what they do not do is redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor. Wealth is distributed fairly, by right and merit, not privilege.

Having lived in two Nordic countries — Finland and Denmark — I have witnessed their policies. This is particularly true for Denmark, where we relocated to study public policies for at-risk children and compare them with policies here in Minnesota.

First, let’s be clear that the Nordics are in far better fiscal shape than is America or are the countries of southern Europe. Their public debt is smaller; they have smaller deficits and much lower unemployment.

Furthermore, their poverty rates are a fraction of ours, all in the single digits, compared with ours now reaching one in every four kids.

Their methods for leveling the economic playing field start with providing all young children with healthy conditions for physical and mental development. Surprisingly, much of the research they rely on comes from America’s best universities.

The proof is that it works — these countries have broken the link of intergenerational poverty that afflicts our country.

Maybe best of all, bipartisan peace would restore public confidence in our government if our warring parties would finally agree on economic fairness and then cooperate to make it work.

At issue is the soul of America. Unless opportunity is made a fundamental right, the American dream is dead.

——–

David Strand is chair of the Aitkin County DFL.

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Our teachers are denigrated by politicians for their failure to fix under-resourced schools filled with at risk children from poor and often troubled families.

The problems facing educators are many and complicated but must be addressed if we are to stop this nations slide to the bottom.

More than a few U.S. states already look like Afghanistan when comparing the health and well being statistics of their children.

The rest of the industrialized world understands that education is the engine that drives society. Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and the 23 other industrialized nations treat children, daycare, & early childhood programs as important parts of their societies. We don’t.

These wise nations know that children need skills to function as contributing citizens while America (in a growing number of states) spend more on prisons than schools, lack affordable daycare and early childhood programs, and sell Ritalin, Prozac, and Zoloft to children instead of providing healthcare.

Subsidized daycare has thousands on waiting lists in Minnesota (I was forced to take children from a working father only because he could not afford daycare when I was an active volunteer guardian ad-Litem).

Daycare workers in the U.S. are paid about as much as food service workers (the lowest paid profession in the nation). American daycare is underfunded, under-trained, and misunderstood.

The high school I attended is now a decrepit old building with fewer extra curricular activities, larger classes and fewer choices. Teaching is not the attractive profession it was when I graduated from college and thought seriously about being an educator.

To politicize the education of children (our future citizens) is the very definition of how to insure the destruction of a democratic society.

As Pliny said 2500 years ago; “What we do to our children, they will do to society”

Below is the Early Childhood Education Manifesto created by David Strand, a KARA board member. Please read it and send it to your State Legislators and Governor. Children have no lobby; we are it.

Support KARA’s effort to stop punishing children; sponsor a conversation in your community (invite me to speak at your conference) / Buy our book or donate

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Preschool education for kids can save America billions

David Strand

Preschool education for kids can save America billions

I serve on the board of a new foundation called KARA, short for kids at risk action. Its goal is to build awareness and promote effective people and programs that can prevent the loss of so many of our children who are falling through society’s cracks. One such program is early childhood education. Following is what we call The Early Childhood Education Manifesto.

Education is the engine of progress and prosperity. No nation can achieve its potential for greatness without investing in its human capital. The extent to which children successfully negotiate the treacherous passage to adulthood depends on the earliest years of brain and emotional development. That explains why early childhood education is crucial to society.

America’s current de facto public policy regarding at-risk children is an economic and moral failure. In essence it can be characterized as follows:

“We reject community investment programs (implemented today by nearly all developed countries) that stress preventing the creation of at-risk children. Instead we assume colossal costs of corrective measures that mostly fail regardless of how earnestly they are pursued.”

The results of this undocumented policy are many:

1. A child is a work-in-process toward citizenship. A successful citizen adds $5 million of economic value to society in his/her life. If unsuccessful, that person instead costs society several million dollars in expenses. Therefore, the lost opportunity value between a success and a failure is somewhere between $5 and $10 million per child.

2. Young children are humiliated when they read below grade level. A wealthy society that rejects proven programs to avoid the humiliation of children is an immoral society.

3. Children who read by the third grade are seldom ever involved with the criminal justice system. Four of five incarcerated juvenile offenders read two years or more below grade, and a majority are functionally illiterate.

4. America has 2.3 million prison inmates, one in four of the world’s inmates and ten times the rates of most European countries. Another five million Americans are involved in the criminal justice system for probation, parole, or supervision, all unproductive activities.

5. Several states forecast needed prison growth based on third grade reading scores. Our federal prisons are operating at 130% of capacity.

6. No industrial nation equals the United States in neglecting the basic needs of working families with children.

7. Minnesota’s under funded policy to assist low-income families for out of home child care has a waiting list of over 7000 families. This is a sham, not real policy.

When America isn’t fair, it doesn’t work. America is cheating its children.

High quality, universally eligible early childhood education and development similar to that now in place for decades elsewhere would solve the above problems. According to Minneapolis Federal Reserve researchers, no public sector investment of taxpayer money yields the high returns verified for early childhood education.

What are we waiting for?

Footnote: Supporting documentation for the Manifesto is available for those who are interested.

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This is the punishment for their misfortune. American children of low income parents have the smallest chance of escaping poverty in growing to adulthood of all industrial nations. By failing to be able to read by their third grade, kids experience humiliation and only rarely manage to recover and catch up to their peers.

Studies show that children who can read by the 3rd grade are seldom ever involved with the criminal justice system. On the contrary, four of five incarcerated juvenile offenders read two years or more below grade and the majority are functionally illiterate.

This horrible truth puts a dagger through the heart of America’s most fundamental self-described exceptionalism. The belief that we are world champions of equal opportunity is false. It is a myth. It is a cruel reality to millions of our littlest citizens.

This crushed pillar of national pride is revealed in a half dozen studies of social mobility reported in recent years. They have come from researchers in Germany, Great Britain, Canada and more recently the Pew Charitable Trust and the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). They are all slightly different, but all have the same conclusion. This sad fact is most recently revealed in Time magazine’s March 14 cover story “Yes, America Is In Decline”.

“Yet several studies, the most recent from the OECD last year, have found that the average American has a much lower chance of moving out of his parents income bracket than people do in places like Denmark, Sweden, Germany and Canada.”

So when conservatives blast liberals for supporting wealth re-distribution, they are ignoring the absence of fairness in how America’s wealth is distributed today. It isn’t fair at all. And liberals who argue that taxes on the rich are unfairly low, neglect the best argument of all. Income does not need to be equally distributed. What is needed are public policies that provide all kids a healthy start in life and a reasonably equal chance at prosperity. That is the equal opportunity environment that all other industrial nations seek and that they all support in varying degrees.

Ironically, the science of brain development that other societies use to convince taxpayers to support equal opportunity policies is a product of researchers here in American universities. We have some of the world’s best and they all show that healthy prenatal care and the first years of life are the most important for brain development. The only problem is our American policy makers have ignored this locally produced research.

And this is the high risk adventure America has embarked on. The single most important determinant or a nation’s success is the strength of its human capital. By squandering the lives of millions of children raised in low income families, America is creating a self fulfilling prophecy. Yes, America is in decline and it is our own fault.

Why is one of every four prison inmates in the world incarcerated here? Does it have anything to do with kids left without support in poor families, and then when they fall behind in school, and later drop out they conclude they never had a chance at the winning cards? Their mother didn’t get prenatal care, something all other modern countries apply universally. Their moms and dads didn’t get to stay home with them in their first year, like that available in all other countries, then they never could go to nursery schools and other pre-kindergarten places. And when they did get to the 3rd grade, they couldn’t read.

Conservatives and liberals, did you know that a woman experiencing childbirth has a greater chance of dying here than in 49 other countries. That includes all other industrial countries plus places like Cuba? Isn’t that something to be ashamed of? Equally shameful is the fact that we don’t know how to keep babies alive in the first year of life-our terrible infant mortality proves it.

Here is what other countries do routinely to ensure reproductive health and to guarantee that all children have a good chance to succeed.

* income of full-time employment provides families above poverty living standard.

* universal housing for all families with children.

* universal health care.

* paid maternity and parental leave for both parents with guarantee of return to the previous job.

* women’s guaranteed right to breastfeed at work.

* universal pre-school child care and development.

* guaranteed sick leave for illness and family care.

* minimum of 5 to 6 weeks of paid vacation.

* taxpayer paid college tuition for qualifying students.

* protection of children from predatory marketing by consumer product companies.

None of these programs exist in the United States. That is why it is accurate to describe our country as a mamouth incubator for prison inmates. And that is why the US is in 30th place in government tax revenue as % to GDP. We are easily the lowest taxed country of the developed world.

Yes conservatives and liberals, Americans should pay more taxes and the top 10% of us who have amassed nearly all the growth in wealth in the past three decades should pay the most. And the reason isn’t to “redistribute wealth”, it is to begin living up to our words we so often pay homage to, that all Americans have the right to the pursuit of happiness.

Those who have prospered the most have the most at stake to correct this injustice.

This isn’t even paper airplane science. It is common sense. You don’t let children play with guns or drive cars. And you don’t punish them for poverty they are born into through no fault of their own.

I don’t think much of people like me, and conservative and liberals and people in the middle, who punish kids for their misfortune of birth, which means America is not fair.

It’s time we stop it. If we don’t, the words of Pliny the elder will be our fate. “What we do to our children, they will do to society.”

Reprinted from
Strand tidings and view 3.22.11
By David Strand,

Aitkin Age Newspaper Aitkin, Minnesota
dlstrand@msn.com

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America’s current public policy regarding at-risk children is an economic and moral failure:
“We reject community investment programs (implemented today by nearly all developed countries) that stress preventing the creation of at-risk children. Instead we assume colossal costs of corrective measures that mostly fail regardless of how earnestly they are pursued.”

The results of this undocumented policy are many:

1. A child is a work-in-process toward citizenship. A successful citizen adds $5 million of economic value to society in his/her life. If unsuccessful, that person instead costs society several million dollars in expenses. Therefore, the lost opportunity value between a success and a failure is somewhere between $5 and $10 million per child.

2. Young children are humiliated when they read below grade level. A wealthy society that rejects proven programs to avoid the humiliation of children is an immoral society.

3. Children who read by the third grade seldom are ever involved with the criminal justice system. Four of five incarcerated juvenile offenders read two years or more below grade, and a majority are functionally illiterate.

4. America has over two million prison inmates, the highest rate in the world and five to ten times that of European countries. Another five million Americans are involved in the criminal justice system for probation, parole, or supervision, all unproductive activities.

5. Several states forecast needed prison growth based on third grade reading scores. Our federal prisons are operating at 130% of capacity.

6. No industrial nation equals the United States in neglecting the basic needs of working families.

7. Minnesota’s under funded policy to assist low-income families for out of home child care has a waiting list of over 7000 families. This is a sham, not real policy.

When America isn’t fair, it doesn’t work. America is cheating its children.

High quality, universally eligible early childhood education and development similar to that now in place for decades elsewhere would solve the above problems. According to Minneapolis Federal Reserve researchers, no public sector investment of taxpayer money yields the high returns verified for early childhood education.

What are we waiting for?
Supporting Documentation

1. The $5 million lifetime per citizen contribution to America’s society is cited by author Jared Diamond in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, page 504.

2. In his key-note speech at the Capitol on January 28, 2009, David Lawrence referred to young children who sense failure when unable to read like their classmates. This is equivalent to humiliation. Policy makers cannot pretend to be ignorant of brain development enhancing early childhood programs. The literature is full of relevant information and it is easy to find.

3. The correlation between reading deficiency and interaction with criminal justice is provided by David Lawrence in his key-note speech cited in number 2 above.

4. Prison population report by Pew Center on the States, Pew Charitable Trust.

5. Several states including California and Arizona use early grade test scores to assist in forecasting required prison capacity growth. Corrections Digest, April 12, 2002 reports Federal Prisons are 131% of design capacity.

6. Among the programs common in peer countries are 1) income of full-time employment provides families above-poverty living standard, 2) universal housing for all families with children, 3) universal health care, 4) paid maternity and parental leave for both parents with guarantee of return to previous job, 5) women’s guaranteed right to breastfeed at work, 6) universal pre-school child care, 7) guaranteed sick leave for illness and family care, minimum of 5 to 6 weeks of paid vacation, 9) taxpayer paid college tuition for qualifying students, 10) protection of children from predatory marketing by consumer product companies.

7. Minneapolis Star Tribune, “Day Care? Cut”, February 13, 2009, page 1.

This Early Childhood Education Manifesto was submitted to KARA by David Strand one year ago. It is even more important this year.

As a personal note to this post, I was required to be part of a court proceedings to remove children from a father whose key problem was that he could not afford day care.

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2009/11/01/what-we-do-to-our-children-they-will-do-to-our-society/

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2010/02/19/day-care-in-america-ny-v-mn/

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2007/02/08/day-care-the-bargain/

Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/KidsAtRisk

amy.rostronledoux@yahoo.com

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Human development labored for centuries in a struggle between early science and ancient superstition. Superstition won many battles, typified by religious leaders who forced Galileo to recant his belief that the earth revolved the sun instead of the opposite. Eventually his beliefs were vindicated and one noted contemporary scientist Stephen Hawking says, “Galileo was responsible for the birth of modern science.” That doesn’t mean that superstition no longer affects human attitudes about science. It does.

No nation is equal to the United States in scientific achievement. Its universities are prodigious engines of research, its scientists unmatched in capturing Nobel prizes, and its corporations are leaders in communications, biology, computer and medical advances. The bad news for American kids is that they live in a nation that neglects to apply many basic social science truths for its most vulnerable citizens. The child and family principles that have been discovered to work by American researchers find their routine implementation in other countries, but tragically, not here. It’s a reality that is devastating for America’s future, its children.

It starts with the unborn. Every other developed country provides universal pre-natal care for expecting moms. This is an essential human decency practice in order to prevent unnecessary infant mortality. As a result, the United States is a shameful 36th in the world, with death rates for its tiniest citizens double what is achieved in northern Europe, where along with Japan, infant mortality is the lowest.

If we just had only the average rate of Europe, more than 10,000 kids would be saved each year. This isn’t rocket science. It is simply implementing what is fundamental and right; provide moms and the babies they carry with preventative health proven essential for successful births.

Next comes the adjustment to life for the healthy newborns. Mountains of brain development research, much of it generated by U.S. scientists, prove that the most important year is the baby’s first. Every modern nation in the world except one, provides universal maternity leave for working parents so that their babies get the best possible start in life. In northern Europe this means both moms and dads can stay home from work for a year or more, and have incomes supplemented and their jobs held for their return.

Norway provides the “Cadillac plan” by paying moms and dads to take care of their children for the first two years of life. This investment is essentially risk free, since research confirms that parents are the most effective care-givers to new infants.

Following generous maternity leave, when working parents return to their jobs, these same countries provide for out of home pre-school child care. These are nonprofit organizations staffed by professionals trained in child development and most commonly are administered by the public education ministries. Affluent families usually pay modestly for this service, but sliding scale policies make it affordable for all and even at no cost for low income families. The reason nearly all modern nations do this is that research has shown that kids with high quality pre-school care are ready to learn when they enter the K-12 systems. In America where pre-school care is a patch work program often staffed by unskilled workers, and out of reach for many low-income families, fully a third of children are not ready to learn when they arrive at kindergarten and nearly all never recover.

Negotiating the treacherous path from infancy to adulthood is best not left untended by enlightened societies. Prodigious research proves that helping pre-teens and early teens avoid unwanted pregnancy and the scourge of sexually transmitted disease is achieved by teaching them universal comprehensive reproductive education. America doesn’t do it. This is an example of neglect of our children that yields unusual grief and unconscionable adult dereliction of responsibility.

The facts of recent demographic studies are mind boggling. In 2008, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention shocked the nation with the news that fully a fourth of America’s teen girls now have a sexually transmitted disease, with rates still rising. Earlier the Alan Guttmacher Institute announced results of a study comparing teens in the U.S. with Great Britain, Canada, France and Sweden. By far U.S. teenagers have the highest rates of Sexually Transmitted Disease (STDs), pregnancy, births and abortions. For example, the teen pregnancy rate of the U.S. is four times the French rate, three times the Swedish rate and twice as high as Great Britain and Canada. America’s policy of turning its back on our youth is nothing short of shocking in its irresponsibility.

Some of the most expensive and time consuming research involves the measurement of income and social mobility among classes. Its methodology is longitudinal research following the outcomes of successive generations of cohorts from child to adulthood journeys. Recently a number of these decades’ long studies have concerned themselves with assessing access to opportunity, including country to country comparisons. Contrary to generally held opinions of having the gold standard of equal opportunity, the United States faired poorly. Surprisingly, the U.S. was found to have relative immobility at both high and low income segments. Wealthy families produced wealthy offspring, while families in poverty produced generations persistently poor. Peer countries consistently produced greater income mobility, with the nations of northern Europe achieving the highest mobility. According to The Economist, “Nordic countries have almost completely snapped the link between the earnings of parents and children at and near the bottom. That is not at all true of America.”

What is going on that causes America to lag far behind its peers in providing children with basic protections against early mortality, with healthy body and brain development, with fundamental preventive skills to avoid STDs and children having children, and finally with fair and equal access to basic opportunity? The brutal truth is that other nations have seized the knowledge of human behavior research, often produced by American scientists, and applied it. For some reason, we have not.

The resource every other modern country uses to address the crucial issues of health and education for children and families, government policy and programs, the United States mostly renounces. One likely reason is revealed in the platform of one of America’s main political parties. The most recent version of the Republican Party Platform was trumpeted at their 2008 convention in St. Paul, Minnesota where John McCain was nominated for president. Under “Protecting our Families” it states “the two most effective forces in reducing crime and other social ills are strong families and caring communities”. Claiming that “government bureaucracy is no longer a credible approach in helping those in need”, the platform proposes the work of “faith based organization, which tend to have a greater degree of success than others in dealing with problems such as substance abuse and domestic violence”.

This strange American phobia for social science advances so faithfully applied by our modern peers mirrors an enormous gap in superstitious beliefs. Three of four Americans believe in the existence of the Devil and hell. The mean for this superstitious position for other modern nations is only one in five (Changing Values and Beliefs in 85 Countries, Halman, Inglehart, Diez-Medrano, Luijkx, Moreno and Basanez). The only countries in the world where the belief in the Devil and hell is higher than here are Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Morroco, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania and Turkey.

Successive generations of healthy and educated children don’t just grow on trees. Fundamental research and credible scientific inquiry are the tools routinely implemented by enlightened societies. A superstitious America is not among them. And our children are the unfortunate victims. For those kids we leave behind and exposed to early mortality, we have created a special kind of hell.

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Early Childhood Education

Manifesto

Education is the engine of progress and prosperity.  No nation can achieve its potential for greatness without investing in its human capital.  The extent to which children successfully negotiate the treacherous passage to adulthood depends on the earliest years of brain and emotional development.  That explains why early childhood education is crucial to society.     

America’s current public policy regarding at-risk children is an economic and moral failure:

“We reject community investment programs (implemented today by nearly all developed countries) that stress preventing the creation of at-risk children.  Instead we assume colossal costs of corrective measures that mostly fail regardless of how earnestly they are pursued.” 

The results of this undocumented policy are many:

1. A child is a work-in-process toward citizenship.  A successful citizen adds $5 million of economic value to society in his/her life.  If unsuccessful, that person instead costs society several million dollars in expenses.  Therefore, the lost opportunity value between a success and a failure is somewhere between $5 and $10 million per child.  

2. Young children are humiliated when they read below grade level.  A wealthy society that rejects proven programs to avoid the humiliation of children is an immoral society.

3. Children who read by the third grade seldom are ever involved with the criminal justice system.  Four of five incarcerated juvenile offenders read two years or more below grade, and a majority are functionally illiterate.

4. America has over two million prison inmates, the highest rate in the world and five to ten times that of European countries.  Another five million Americans are involved in the criminal justice system for probation, parole, or supervision, all unproductive activities.  

5. Several states forecast needed prison growth based on third grade reading scores.   Our federal prisons are operating at 130% of capacity. 

6. No industrial nation equals the United States in neglecting the basic needs of working families with children.

7. Minnesota’s under funded policy to assist low-income families for out of home child care has a waiting list of over 7000 families.  This is a sham, not real policy.

When America isn’t fair, it doesn’t work.  America is cheating its children.

High quality, universally eligible early childhood education and development similar to that now in place for decades elsewhere would solve the above problems.  According to Minneapolis Federal Reserve researchers, no public sector investment of taxpayer money yields the high returns verified for early childhood education.

What are we waiting for?  

Supporting Documentation 

1. The $5 million lifetime per citizen contribution to America’s society is cited by author Jared Diamond in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, page 504.

2. In his key-note speech at the Capitol on January 28, 2009, David Lawrence referred to young children who sense failure when unable to read like their classmates.  This is equivalent to humiliation.  Policy makers cannot pretend to be ignorant of brain development enhancing early childhood programs.  The literature is full of relevant information and it is easy to find. Mr. Lawrence is president of The Early Childhood Foundation at the University of Florida.  Prior to that he was publisher of the Miami Herald.    

3. The correlation between reading deficiency and interaction with criminal justice is provided by David Lawrence in his key-note speech cited in number 2 above.

4. Prison population report by “Pew Center on the States”, Pew Charitable Trust.

5. Several states including California and Arizona use early grade test scores to assist in forecasting required prison capacity growth.  Corrections Digest, April 12, 2002 reports Federal Prisons are 131% of design capacity.

6. Among the programs common in peer industrial countries are 1) income of full-time employment provides families above-poverty living standard, 2) universal housing for all families with children, 3) universal health care, 4) paid maternity and parental leave for both parents with guarantee of return to previous job, 5) women’s guaranteed right to breastfeed at work, 6) universal pre-school child care and development, 7) guaranteed sick leave for illness and family care, minimum of 5 to 6 weeks of paid vacation, 9) taxpayer paid college tuition for qualifying  students, 10) protection of children from predatory marketing by consumer product companies.  None of these programs exist in the United States.  

7. Minneapolis Star Tribune, “Day Care? Cut”, February 13, 2009, page 1.

8. Rolnick, Art and Grunewald, Rob.  ”Early Education’s Big Dividends”. Based on “Early Intervention on a large scale”, Education Week 26, no. 17 (January 4, 2007): 32, 34-36.   

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There is a myth about our public education system that has the potential of bringing down our nation. The myth is that the lack of funds does not plague America’s schools.

A year ago the St. Paul Pioneer Press published a series designed to help voters make choices leading to the November election. It ran for several weeks and featured listing of “facts unfiltered”.

In an issue devoted to education, one of the facts voters could take to the bank was that America spends more money per K-12 pupil than any nation except Switzerland. In other words, putting more money into education is not the answer.

The idea that we spend as much or more on K-12 education is a myth. The truth is that our peer democracies devote far greater resources on educating their children. Until we realize the myth for what it is, we are on our way down.

One of the most important reasons for a good public education system is to insure that all of our children get the best possible start in life. If we care about our country, we should want all children to be successful.

Educating our kids isn’t just a priority, it is the highest priority.

There are two critical factors that determine the success of education.

First, children must come to the process ready to learn. That means they have good nutrition and good health. It also means that their young minds are nurtured and that they are comfortable with children their own age. Second, the teachers need to be of the highest quality possible.

Combining kids ready to learn and excellent teaching leads to educated children.

What do other nations do that we do not? I can cite the countries of Northern Europe because I lived in three of them for a total of ten years. I have been in their schools.

I also served on a Fulbright scholarship committee working with education leaders.

Every child in these countries has preventative health care, homelessness among children is forbidden, they have the lowest rates of infant mortality, and they lead the world with the lowest rates of child poverty.

On average their child poverty is one sixth of America’s!

Every child has access to high quality pre-school child care. For example, the pre-kindergarten centers in Denmark are run by the ministry of education and child care workers are required to have three years of child development training after high school. Most Danish parents work so nearly every child attends these pre-school centers and they are ready to learn when they start kindergarten.

Their schools offer breakfasts so no child starts school on an empty stomach. In Finland, taxpayer paid school lunches are served to all kids, and every school has a dentist who provides in-school dental care. None of these countries has America’s silent epidemic of tooth decay as described by former Surgeon General David Satcher.

European teachers have greater support and they are far less likely to leave teaching for a higher paying job elsewhere. These countries also provide tuition for higher educations so qualifying children of teachers do not rely on their parents to pay for college.

In the US we have too many kids living in poverty, homeless, without health care, hungry, and left alone while parents work several jobs. Too many school children are not ready to learn, estimated at 35% by child development experts, and they never recover.

We have the highest rate of 12th grade illiteracy and the highest dropout rate. Too many end up in gangs, on the street, and ultimately in prison.

Spending on K-12 education is not limited to the cost of operating schools. That’s the small picture. The comprehensive resources devoted to child health, nutrition, early child care, housing and antipoverty programs result in a massive investment aimed at giving every child a chance to succeed in school.

In Minnesota we are going in reverse. The National Women’s Law Center has just ranked our state 40th nationwide in support for low income child care. In 2000 we ranked in the top five. In a breathtaking reaction to this report, Republican state rep Fran Bradley stated, “Our taxpayers remain very generous compared to other states”.

In our race to the bottom, some Minnesotans don’t seem to understand the issue. Providing resources to help children succeed is not a question of generosity. It is the life blood of America and it is a moral obligation.

The Pioneer Press was wrong, and their unfiltered fact is a horrible myth. We do not value educating our children, and that means we do not value children. That is shameful.

My friend Mike Tikkanen has written a new book, Invisible Children. On its opening page he quotes Pliny the Elder. “What we do to our children, they will do to society”.

Amen.

David Strand

Author, Nation Out of Step

Support schools and at risk children, start a KARA group in your community

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