Thank You, David Brooks!

Finally, someone articulate explains the “schools can’t do it all” issue that I’ve been struggling with for the last couple of months – David Brooks’ column “A Critique of Pure Reason in Education” published in the NY Times 3/1 and the Strib today. (Unfortunately you have to be a NYT subscriber to read it online – or go buy today’s Strib.)

I’ve been frustrated with Don Samuels & a hundred other people blaming the schools for the poor achievement of kids who come to us with enormous deficits. At some point, the finger has to be pointed at the forces creating the deficits – which makes everyone squeamish because of the implication of bad parenting. Brooks takes a constructive tack and simply proposes that government must rethink its role and invest not just in better early-ed, but in more programs like Circle of Security and Nurse-Family Partnership which help new mothers do the things we know kids need from birth on.

Brooks notes that Martha Farah’s research at Penn has been pretty clear about come of the deficits that poverty brings:
* Students who do not feel emotionally safe tend not to develop good memories (good for
coping, bad for school)
* Students from less stimulation environments have much smaller vocabularies and worse language skills

Conversely, children from attentive, attuned parenting relationships do better in school an beyond. While this may be no surprise to anyone in education, it focuses our attention on the need to intervene before such problems take root.

And there are ways to do that, if we are willing to put the child’s right to good mental health before the family’s right to privacy. Hmm…

I suppose conservatives would say that what goes on in the household is none of government’s business, and in a way, they would be right.

But if we are committed to the education of all Americans – and, supposedly, we are – than we need to extend that commitment to acknowledge, as Brooks puts it:

“…Education is a cumulative process that begins at the dawn of life and builds early in life as children learn how to learn…”
and
“…we have to get over the definition of education as something that takes place in schools between the hours of 8 and 3, between the months of September and June, and between the ages of 5 and 18.”

Brooks challenges the current crop of presidential candidates to embrace the need to go beyond fixing schools to fixing the "powerful social trends" that put kids at a disadvantage.

Thank you!!!