America's Schools Are Indispensable: Shame On Us

In a July 7, 2020, talk in the White House East Room, President Donald Trump said, “We want to reopen the schools. Everybody wants it. The moms want it, the dads want it, the kids want it. It’s time to do it.”

The President went on to laud the declining COVID-19 death rate. “You know, our mortality rate is, right now, at a level that people don’t talk about, but it’s down tenfold.  Tenfold.”

Over 137,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 to date (7/11/20), and 64,600 new cases were confirmed — about five times more than the entire continent of Europe. Several U.S. states, including Arizona and Florida, currently have more confirmed cases per capita than any country in the world.

Realizing that deaths lag emerging cases, Dr. Fauci cautioned against becoming complacent in light of the decreased death rate. Perhaps he’s visited some of the refrigerator trucks serving as morgues in Arizona and Texas.

Trump went quickly from talking about the coronavirus pandemic to the U.S. economy and a rebound in the Stock Market, likely revealing why he wants schools to open. Parents need to get back to work, and schools need to babysit their kids so they can do so.

Vice President Pence took the podium after the First Lady touted her “Be Best” initiative. Mrs. Trump stressed the importance of recess. Pence pointed out that some 7 million American children suffer from either mental illness or emotional disturbance, and stated that they principally receive care from health and mental services at their school. Might we ask why?

OECD Family database

The sad fact is that when it comes to caring for America’s children, we are all delinquent. Let’s start at the beginning.*

• In America, the infant death rate is twice as high as in similarly wealthy countries.
• In America, for every 100,000 live births, 28 women die in childbirth or shortly thereafter. In Canada, the same figure is 11. Black women in America die having a child at roughly the same rate as women in Mongolia.
• In America, we spend less of our gross domestic product on family benefits than all other OECD countries, save for Mexico and Turkey, whose combined GDP is less than a tenth of ours.
• In America, we do not guarantee impoverished parents welfare. The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program provides benefits to fewer than one in four poor families.
• In America, our child poverty rate is higher than in nearly all other OECD countries — two, three, or even four times as high as in nations comparable in terms of per capita income.
• In America, as many as 1.5 million families caring for three million kids live on less than $2 per person, per day, in cash income.
• In America, in any given year there are 2.5 million kids that experience homelessness.
• In America, we profess to support mothers, and encourage them to keep working when they have children, but we have no paid maternity, parental, or home-care leave entitlement. We are the only OECD country for which that is true.
• In America, both Republican and Democratic administrations claim to support early childhood education and care, yet as a percentage of GDP, we are truants, ranking practically at the bottom of the list on spending.
• In America, 10 to 15 percent of children in some states have no form of health insurance, no way to pay for vaccinations, medications, counseling, etc.
• In America, teenagers are 82 times more likely to die from a gun homicide than their peers in other wealthy nations.
• In America, rich kids have better schools than poor kids, largely because we link school funding to property taxes. As a result, the so-called “poverty gap” in standardized test scores is 40% larger today than it was a generation ago. Our kids rank in the bottom third of OECD countries in terms of reading and mathematics, and only three in five American kids are proficient in those subjects by 8th grade.

The area in which America is far and away the leader is in our criminal “justice” system. We have the highest rate of incarceration on Earth, and we lead in putting minors behind bars; fourteen states have no minimum age for when a child can be prosecuted and punished as an adult.

The United States of America is the only country that has not ratified the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Hillary Clinton wrote a best-selling book in 1996 addressing America’s dismal history of educating and caring for its children. It was titled, “It Takes a Village.” Clinton said “I chose that old African proverb… because it offers a timeless reminder that children will thrive only if their families thrive and if the whole of society cares enough to provide for them.”

Mrs. Clinton is well-known as a “policy wonk,” and her book is a study in specific policy fixes for America’s glaring deficits in educating and caring for its children. Critics at both extremes of the political spectrum had plenty to dislike about Clinton’s prescriptions, but Republican reaction was particularly scathing, assailing her vision as paternalistic, anti-religious, and that old reliable Republican bugaboo, socialistic.

What’s missed in all the nitpicking and gnashing of teeth over the book, is the fact that Mrs. Clinton presented a broad vision for dealing with childhood education and care, and an integrated, systematic approach for realizing that vision. How refreshing. This is something sorely lacking in today’s chaotic approach to societal division and disintegration; a situation now exacerbated by an unforgiving contagion equally poorly managed and contained.

The Trump Administration’s insistence that we must reopen schools in the Fall in light of America’s miserable excuse for a childhood education and care system is not just irresponsible, it is indefensible.

Show us you can manage the pandemic, Mr. Trump, then we’ll talk about reopening schools.
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*I have borrowed heavily in this list from the comprehensive article on this subject written by Annie Lowrey for The Atlantic, June 21, 2018. Refer to that article for original sources (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/06/how-america-treats-children/563306/).

Reflections on Independence Day 2020

My friend Bill Pennell reflects on his heritage as he considers Independence Day 2020.

Patrick Henry
E. William Sievers, Sculptor 1932

I consider myself patriotic. There is an American flag flying outside our house at this very moment on the 4th of July. On my mother's side of the family, I am descended from men who fought for our independence. Patrick Henry was the family's solicitor at the time, and yes, they were slaveholders. And on both sides, I am descended from men who fought on both sides of our Civil War.

Yet I recognize that our country is not perfect. Some things we have done and stood for do not hold up to scrutiny by contemporary standards. And some of them did not hold up to scrutiny by the standards of the day. As Patriots it is our duty to "see things whole" as John Wesley Powell put it. We need to recognize our virtues and our shortcomings and to do what we can to correct the latter.

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William T. 'Bill' Pennell served as director of the Atmospheric Science & Global Change Division at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington.

Reflections on Independence Day 2020

In the midst of the Coronavirus Pandemic, and worldwide protests around Black Lives Matter, a friend, Miriam Kerzner, reflects on Independence Day 2020.

On this Independence Day, let us model ourselves on the best of the Founding Fathers. Let us remember that we have values so that we can evaluate where we are and strive to do better. Let us have the ability to recognize failure, but see it as an opportunity to create something better.

Jefferson, a devotee of the Enlightenment, knew slavery was wrong when he wrote the words that "all men are created equal." It was a phrase that he could never live up to, but it has been the rallying cry throughout our history as our oppressed minorities have fought for recognition of their rights -- and won.

The initial United States, a confederation of independent countries, failed miserably because of too strong an emphasis on the individual, because of too great a fear of centralized government. In response, the Framers of the Constitution launched the second, quieter American revolution where they pushed back against the forces of dissolution and created a republican government that has survived for over 230 years. It proclaimed that government has a role beyond protecting individual rights. Legitimate governance will "establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and pursue the blessings of liberty."

Perhaps most wisely, they called this second government a "more perfect union", recognizing the impossibility a creating one that could not be improved, but acknowledging our responsibility as "the People of the United States" to pursue that path nonetheless. Madison immediately wrote amendments to the Constitution to ensure that the people, and state governments, did not have to fear an imperial government. But those amendments, binding only on Congress, left people's rights dependent on their state governments.

The Civil War and the Reconstruction Amendments that followed, transformed the Constitution from a document that protected individuals and states from a too powerful central government to one that recognized that civil rights are often most at risk from those governments closest to us -- state and local. The Bill of Rights was extended to apply to these governments as well and, eventually, led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the extension of civil rights to women and the LGBTQ+ community.

We are at another crucial point of another revolution. Once again we have the opportunity to push back against the forces of hate, of fear, of cynicism and ignorance, of our failure to apply the rule of law equally. This Fourth of July is a moment filled with hope that must be backed by determined activism. Those who came before us fought and won partial victories. On this Independence Day, may we work to give still greater voice to the better angels of all our natures and strive for a still more perfect union.

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Miriam Kerzner is a member of the CBC faculty. She's an instructor in Political Science.