A child is raised by the age of four.
This was the sage advice offered to me by a wise elder whose identity escapes me presently. I didn’t quite understand this truism at the time, but I have often considered it, particularly since becoming a mother, and before that, during my years of watching the Great American Decline—as historians may one day denote the early 21st century.
So, count me in the ranks of the many educators and children’s advocates who are immeasurably excited about President-elect Barack Obama’s pledge to focus on early childhood education, and the formation of his Presidential Early Learning Council.
But the primary source of my excitement is not professional, but personal. As the mother of a young child, and as an American, I consider this the best possible news.
Even before the New York Times recent article “Obama Pledge Stirs Hope in Early Education,” this has seemed like a common sense approach. It should not take economist and Nobel Laureate, James J. Heckman, to demonstrate that “each dollar devoted to the nurturing of young children can eliminate the need for far greater government spending on remedial education, teenage pregnancy and prisons.”
This is especially true in an age when we hear more and more news of increasingly young juvenile offenders — felons — and single-parent households. And recent studies demonstrate a direct correlation between the two.
Further, recently I was stunned—as I sat in a beauty salon waiting my turn for service—to overhear a discussion between a college-educated, self-employed African American mother and her young son, perhaps 8 years-old, who was struggling to write the number four, or was it seven.
