Not Yours to Give

[kandrathe]

What overall population statistics are you looking at? In the field of education, the income level of the family is known to be a predictor of student achievement in school.

That's why the federal Title One program was created- to "watchdog" the educational success of children from poor families. While education is not equivalent to home life, it's clear that differences in the home produce different results at school. It has been running for decades now, without any of the slippery slope effects that you mentioned.

Anecdotally, I could give you any number of horror stories about the lives of the kids that I work with. I have spent a little bit of time in higher-income schools, enough to know that this isn't a condition of kids in general, but a problem specific to low-income kids. The rate of drug abuse, alcoholism, violence, neglect, etc. in these families is simply astonishing. Sometimes I wonder how the kids can function at all, and to the point where me trying to teach them that "silent e makes vowels say their names" seems downright silly and inconsequential.

I was looking at;
http://www.childstats.gov I've seen some slippery slope type things, but they are subtle things. I see more attention to "obese" children, or the presence of a smoker in the home as an indication of parental neglect. These and other "sensitivities" are things that were not in the realm of possible when I was a child.

I work with charities and relief organizations, so I come in contact more with families from the social welfare aspect rather than the educational one. I can imagine you have your heart torn out frequently with the types of things some children live with. My point here is that if you look at the statistics, it tells an optimistic story of the trends in the things you are seeing. Most categories of harms are dropping, and health is improving, other than obesity. And, you don't see much improvement in academic achievement, even though the amount of money spent per pupil has risen dramatically. It's hard to find objective research in the area of parenting, since so often those who seek to justify parental oversight are performing the research. By looking at the basic statistics on the number of children who are healthy, read to, immunized, supplied with basic care and education, I would venture a solid 90% are reared with competence. Of the remaining 10%, it is unclear, but I would venture many of those children are also loved, while not entirely cared for due to various reasons including poverty. There are about 5% in jeopardy and this number seems to be consistent from 1974 until now, but dropping slowly over time. So, do we regulate the 100% to capture the 1/20th in jeopardy?