Session 3: The Raising of America

1.       What strikes you as most important in this discussion of the relationship between social policy, child development, and later achievement?

These facts strongly stood out to me. Americans fought strongly for unpaid maternity leave, while most similar countries provide guaranteed paid maternity leave. Most mothers are back to work within three months of birth of a child and 70% of children are raised by working parents.

The cost and benefit brought up in the video was very interesting in the social policy perspective. I believe that many people think more about the parents of children rather than the children themselves, and think that because of choices adults may have made they do not deserve care for their young children. But social policy looks at the child alone. Providing education, affordable child care, flexibility at work with pre and post-natal care appointments that are paid for, paid leave for mothers and fathers, and nursing breaks like the examples discussed in the video will lead to severely lower crime rates, thus preventing the extreme costs associated with the legal and prison systems. As a country we finally are focusing on prevention medicine, but why not on crime and social decline prevention?

The hardest part of this is accomplishing the structural changes, but especially the delay between investing in young children and when these children enter the working world twenty years later. This truly is an investment. I recently found out that educators from China are partnering with the charter school I am working at in the fall. This falls right in line with the video discussion of other countries jumping on the undeniable research.

2.       What do you think this perspective adds to the discussion of school reform?

As more and more of my friends and family have children, I find that they struggle to be able to stay at home and raise their children. Many have expressed how they look forward to their child being old enough to attend public school simply because they will not have to pay so much for child care. This is not to get rid of their child by any means. They want to stay at home and raise their kids but need the money their jobs provide. Yet having both parents work, but then paying half or more of one parent’s salary for child care doesn’t seem to make much sense, either. Affordable child care is definitely needed.  Because of the increasing need for parents to work, public education is becoming increasingly a type of nanny care rather than a place to create a strong foundation for increasing intelligence and fostering creativity. Providing resources, paid time off, and financial incentives for families with young children will create a huge difference in not only the positive development of children, but also the national attitude towards the importance and purpose of true education.

I especially enjoyed at the end of the sample reel when they discuss how we have so much information and research behind the value of education and investing in caring and providing for our children (especially at a young age), and yet do so little in acting on this research by changing policy.

At the end of the sample reel, James Heckman (a Nobel Laureate in Economics) touched on how investing in a child (more education and care, etc.) will result in such high returns for all of society. This reminded me of reading Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. Levitt (an economist) presented a very controversial but strongly researched theory about why the severe crime drop occurred in the 1990’s. Males aged 18-24 are the most likely to commit crimes. Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in 1973 and crime began to drop about 18 years later when these unwanted children would have entered the peak crime-committing years. I do not make any comments or opinions about abortion, but find the idea of unwanted children presented in the book another source of evidence in this overall argument to invest in our country’s children. These children are born into families that do not have the resources to raise their children and have no support from our country to help them do so. These are the children that end up neglected, because of the lack of social policy support to assist in the growth of our children.

I admire and applaud the Granite school district for investing in low income students rather than giving up and doing the “easy” thing by sending them into special education. By not paying attention to our children and working with them at their level to raise them up but rather passing them along into programs that believe them to be less than their potential, we are setting up our students, citizens, and country for failure. Let’s invest in our students and truly set each and every one up for success.

3.       What is one question these videos raise for you?

The state competition of businesses interferes with the overall success of the nation. I wonder if the differences in state curriculum add to this competition rather than supporting students. Would a national plan, structure, fund, or curriculum be beneficial?

Blogs I responded to:
Sarah Wilkerson
Jeff Vangene