Cheo goes on to say that she knew Akil was only doing what had been done to him by adults but each day during my substitute teaching stint in Oakland's public school system, Akil was a reminder of a nagging question. What can be done to make sure that all kids, particularly black boys, enter kindergarten prepared to succeed? The answer is complex and goes beyond simply relying on Head Start, our chronically under-funded national pre-kindergarten program. And even though more than 40 states offer pre-k programs, largely for 4 year olds, the demand for enrollment often exceeds capacity. Add to this a gulf of disparities in health, education, and employment among some of the parents of under-achieving black boys and the picture can be pretty bleak. Even in states such as California and Maryland, where a history of poorly performing public schools in cities like Oakland and Baltimore have prompted the rise of successful universal preschool programs, black boys - in comparison to their peers in other ethnic groups - are being left behind. Coincidentally, studies report that this target group may have the most to gain from pre-k education.
According to the National Institute for Early Education Research, high quality early childhood education programs can increase the likelihood of high school graduation and employment and reduce welfare dependence, school dropout rates, and crime. In fact, the Children's Defense Fund's campaign to stop the "cradle to prison pipeline" documents the fact that we can now clearly see a research-driven trajectory for boys like Akil. Nationally, 1 in 3 black boys born in 2001 are at risk of imprisonment during their lifetime. This sad fact - determined by pre-k readiness and third grade reading scores, among other indicators - is used by corporations within the prison industrial complex to help gauge how many prisons they will build. Apparently there's still some truth to that famous Malcolm X quote, "If you're [born] black in America, you're born in jail." But this can also be used as motivation to support early childhood education and programs that are making long-term commitments to improve outcomes for black males. One such program is the 2025 Campaign for Black Men and Boys, a national public policy and social action effort incubated by the Twenty-First Century Foundation and initially supported by the Ford Foundation. The multi-year, multi-city campaign posits one main question: "What can we do to impact the life of a black boy born in 2007 so that by the time he is 18, in the year 2025, his outcomes for success have significantly improved?"
The answers encompass making significant gains in health, employment, justice, fatherhood, and educational outcomes for black males. And of these, education, especially, pre-kindergarten, may be the most pivotal. Twenty-First Century Foundation partnered with actor-director Mario Van Peebles and producer Karen Williams to create Bring Your "A" Game - a documentary film that, in Van Peebles' words, "sheds light on the resilience and influence of black males" and provides a relevant social context to the challenges for quality education. The film will air on B.E.T. on Sept. 12, 2009. In a recent address to the NAACP, President Obama voiced his support for early childhood education programs and challenged governors, even in these times of economic uncertainty, to make educational improvements a priority. "Today, some early learning programs are excellent. Some are mediocre. And some are wasting what studies show are - by far - a child's most formative years," said the president, whose stimulus bill has already begun to make good on his promise to pour $10 billion into pre-k programs.
Still in my mind, government programs and funding to support universal preschool, while desperately needed to reduce the school "readiness gap" between low-income African Americans and whites, will only go so far. Shoring up educational gaps experienced by young black males will take the same kind of personal accountability and individual "do or die" mantra that propelled movements like civil rights or feminism in this country. Cheo even explains that during her substitute teaching stint in Oakland's public school system, there was never a counselor available to take children like Akil out of class to talk. There was never discussion about finding support for his mother, who was still battling substance-abuse issues. There was never a connection made between the substandard classroom in Oakland and the rising homicide rate in the city. The school administrators were too busy putting out fires to be concerned with how they ignited in the first place. Leadership and personal accountability were sorely absent. These are problems that many schools in urban and rural areas face every day and try to manage them the best they can.
Cheo explains that by the time Akil stopped speaking in kindergarten; it's likely that he was reacting to something that had happened to him during the most important cognitive stage of his life, his first five years. Would pre-school have made the difference? Perhaps, but with recent census data indicating that nearly 70% of black children live without a father in the home, amidst a host of other social and economic disparities, its clear that the crisis in public education requires more than an injection of federal dollars. It requires all of us to think more broadly about the importance of pre-school. With the right mix of parental support, it could mean the difference between a child growing up to one day be measured for a cap and gown... or a prison uniform.
Therefore if people need even more reason or evidence that we need to change the mindsets of preschool students than the most recent research in child development says that 4-year-olds lie once an hour. For more than a century American parents—ever more distanced from grandmothers and suspicious of tradition—have looked to social science to explain their children to them. Thus they have gobbled up books and articles by experts who periodically deliver the latest truths about child-rearing. Back in 1945, when Dr. Spock published his "Baby and Child Care," readers' devotion to expert opinion was so intense that he began his book with the reassuring words: "Trust yourself." Not that he believed it. The book was jammed with advice. Now, in a book called "NurtureShock," written by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, they survey the newest new findings about child development. Little in the book is all that shocking, but given our enthusiasm for turning tentative child research into settled policy, the studies that the authors discuss are of more than passing interest.
A striking example is the latest research on self-esteem. As Mr. Bronson and Ms. Merryman remind us, the psychologist Nathaniel Brandon published a path-breaking paper in 1969 called "The Psychology of Self-Esteem" in which he argued that feelings of self-worth were a key to success in life. The theory became a big hit in the nation's schools; in the mid-1980s, the California Legislature even established a self-esteem task force. By now, there are 15,000 scholarly articles on the subject. And what do they show? That high self-esteem doesn't improve grades, reduce anti-social behavior, deter alcohol drinking or do much of anything good for kids. In fact, telling kids how smart they are can be counterproductive. Many children who are convinced that they are little geniuses tend not to put much effort into their work. Others are troubled by the latent anxiety of adults who feel it necessary to praise them constantly.
The benefits of teaching tolerance and promoting diversity look equally unimpressive in the current research. According to "NurtureShock," a lot of well-meaning adult nostrums—"we're all friends," "we're all equal"—pass right over the heads of young children. Attempts to increase racial sensitivity in older students can even lead to unintended consequences. One researcher found that "more diversity translates into more divisions between students." Another warns that too much discussion of past discrimination can make minority children over-reactive to perceived future slights. As for trying to increase emotional intelligence, the education fad of the 1990s, it doesn't seem to promote "pro-social values" either. It turns out that bullies use their considerable EQ, as it is called, to control their peers.
Education policy makers will find more cause for embarrassment in "NurtureShock." Drop-out programs don't work. Neither do anti-drug programs. The most popular of them, D.A.R.E (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), developed in 1983 by the Los Angeles Police Department, has become a more familiar sight in American schools than algebra class. By 2000, 80% of American school districts were using D.A.R.E. materials in some form. Now, after extensive study, comes the news: The program has no long-term and only mild short-term, effects. Oh, and those tests that school districts use to determine giftedness in young children? They're just about useless. According to Mr. Bronson and Ms. Merryman, early IQ tests predict later achievement less than half the time. Between ages 3 and 10, about two-thirds of children will experience a rise or drop of 15 points or more.
You might assume from these examples that the authors want to make a point about our national gullibility in the face of faddish science. Unfortunately, they deconstruct yesterday's wisdom at the same time that they embrace today's—even when research is on the order of "do-we-really-need-a-$50,000-study-to-tell-us-this?" or of dubious practical value. Kids lie, they inform us. In fact, 4-year-olds lie once every hour. Still, Mr. Bronson and Ms. Merryman are impressed by research showing that "lying is an advanced skill," supposedly demonstrating both social and cognitive sophistication. As for teenagers, well, they lie too. Parents shouldn't worry about them, though; they fib not because they want to get away with stuff they shouldn't be doing but because they don't want to upset mom and dad. Depending on your point of view, you might not be surprised to learn that permissive parents don't get more truth-telling from their teens than stricter parents. In any event, teens like conflict because, it is now claimed, they see it as enhancing their relationships with their parents.
Given how often last year's science has become today's boondoggle, Mr. Bronson and Ms. Merryman's analysis would have benefited from a dose of skepticism. Yes, social science has become more rigorously empirical in recent decades. A lot of the findings described in "NurtureShock" might even be true. But that doesn't mean that we have the remotest idea how to translate such findings into constructive parental behavior or effective public programs. In a famous 1994 study described by the authors, researchers discovered that babies of professional parents were exposed to almost three times the number of words as the babies of welfare parents. Parents took to buying $699 "verbal pedometers," a gadget that counts the number of words their baby is hearing per hour. Now experts are modifying the earlier findings. Turns out that it's not so much the number of words kids hear that matters but the responsiveness of adults to a child's words and explorations. Shocked? I doubt it.
Therefore with all of this data and information, it is clear that if we are going to win this war on our youth, we must first change their mindsets when they are young. We must teach our youth to be honesty and to want better out of life. We must begin to teach our youth values, integrity and how to respect others at a young age. We can’t ignore this issue any longer. We have to get to our youth young and show them that life can be better no matter what personal issues they deal with. We have to do better than what we are doing but it starts with us as a community as a nation making sure we give our youth during their early days of learning the proper help they need to succeed. What happens in their home or in their community can and should not hinder their learning flow. We have to prevent our youth from going down the path to be criminals. We have to change the mentality of preschoolers so that they know that they can achieve anything they want to achieve as long as they live morally sound lives that adhere to upstanding values that will mold them into living purposely driven lives.
This is the approach we must take in order to win this war on our youth. If we can’t impact many of our youth when they are young than we will continuously see us lose this fight on our youth. We have to get through to our youth when they are preschoolers so that we can give them another look or perspective on life. Hope shouldn’t die when our youth are young but it should live on within them inspiring them. The flame of hope in our youth should carry them well into their adult years so that they have something to strive for, something to look forward to, and something to carry them to achieve more out of life. Our youth need us now more than ever and it starts from day one when they are born. That is why we all must help to raise our youth especially when parents are not doing their part. This is the era of no excuses; we are all responsible for changing the mindsets of preschoolers, no more excuses or shifting of blame. The buck stops today.
SAVE OUR YOUTH!
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