A Question of Priorities

I'm going out on a limb here to describe some of my disquiet about our country's heroic and valiant efforts in Haiti, a country which has always struggled but which recently has been visited by a truly doomsday earthquake.

It is not that I don't care for the suffering of the people of Haiti, nor that I believe they are somehow undeserving of the enormous aid we and other nations of the world have given unstintingly. I believe in nations with more blessings sharing with those who have so little.

My disquiet is illustrated by a piece of irony from a few years ago. There was this joke making the rounds about the difference between a hurricane in Indonesia and a hurricane in New Orleans. The punch line was: If you are in Indonesia, the US government will send aid. (Ba-dum dum)

I understand that in an increasingly global economy, we are all so interconnected. United we stand, divided we fall.

Remember the old adage, "Charity begins at home"? The adage was seldom applied growing up in the deep South. Missionaries from "deepest darkest Africa" (my childish mind always envisioned a place where the sun did not shine, since it was referred to as the "dark" continent) were much lauded. Congregations hung on their every word, gathering clothing and Bibles to fill an overseas container for the "poor heathens across the ocean." While just across town, there were dark-skinned children who lived in shanties, who went to bed hungry and who weren't allowed to attend our schools and churches.

Does anyone else see the utter hypocrisy of a Congress debating whether to fund healthcare and education for US children on the one hand (evidently, we don't have all that much money) and on the other hand sending doctors and food and medicines to Haiti, whose victims are undoubtedly in more dire straits in this current crisis?

Please don't think I am unfeeling or in favor of ignoring Haiti or that I grew horns since my last post. I just wonder where our priorities lie and why.

Several years ago, a good Christian lady whom I admire and respect a great deal made the emphatic statement that we are a society who values children. She practically dropped her dentures when I responded with "No, I don't think we value children."

My argument was this: If you listen to our rhetoric, you could certainly make a case for our society's care and value of children. But if you were to look at our actions, you could equally make a case for us not giving a tinker's damn about children. Or, at least not those who live in the next block.

Our rhetoric says: "Every child deserves to grow up in safety in a loving home, nurtured and educated to achieve their God-given potential."

Our actions say: "Every child doesn't deserve to grow up in a loving home, or even grow up at all. In this country, the world's most wealthy, we have children whose only meal of the day is the one they get at school. If that. Children are regularly given back to parents who have proven to be abusers. Child molesters are released after 4 years on good behavior and our schools have become warehouses or babysitters.

While our schools are daily stressed with funding all the various programs special needs children need (not to mention the untold millions spent on children who do not speak English), our "average" and "gifted" students lanquish in classrooms that are not designed to meet their needs or grow their minds.

Several years ago, I observed that our Alternative Schools have become, by happenstance, our "gifted" program, "No Child Left Behind" having desimated school budgets to fund the convoluted and at times contradictory requirements of that unfunded mandate.

Alternative Schools, to the uninitiated, are set-aside schools whereby the behavior-disordered students are kept away from the "good" students, presumably so the good children won't become infected with whatever the "bad" students have.

When you look at these "disordered and disorderly" students, you realize that, in many instances, they are students who couldn't get the beleagured teachers' attention, so they acted out. They are bored and unchallenged by the dreck that our education systems spew. Teachers are having their feet held to the fire to educate the special needs children, while the average and gifted students are just supposed to get it on their own.

(A teacher friend of mine told me the apocryphal story about her child, then 9-years-old, who said that ADHD Johnny in her class was given a piece of candy every day if he sat quietly for an hour. The child complained that SHE had sat quietly all day, so why didn't she get a piece of candy? Why indeed?)

The founders of a gifted charter school have determined that, for every $10 spent on average students in the US, $100 is spent on special needs children, while $1 is spent on gifted and talented children. From which two groups are we to rebuild our technological research capabilities, to find a cure for cancer, to probe the mysteries of the universe?

Once again, I'm not suggesting that the special needs kids do not deserve the attention and financial emphasis they currently enjoy. They certainly do and in a true "No Child Left Behind" universe, they would certainly be included. But we are "Leaving Behind" the children of average and above average talents and capabilities to cater to those who might never learn enough to make it in the world. Perhaps this is one of the reasons we are trailing the world in education.

Two possible conclusions come to mind and I'm not sure to which I subscribe:

1) That the world (and our country) has the wherewithal to truly take care of ALL children, whether in Haiti or in an inner city school. whether gifted or special needs, and we have chosen NOT to use our resources in that fashion (and therefore do NOT value children) or,
2) That we have limited resources and therefore should be spending those resources on children in our own country who might one day find that cure or make that technological breakthrough. Once those have been served, then we certainly should spread the wealth, but until then, charity begins at home.

Perhaps there are other conclusions, but these are the ones that spring to my admittedly limited mind. Like Jonathan Swift in his satiric "A Modest Proposal", I confess to a smallish world view. This is indeed a "modest proposal" that I would be very surprised to see come to pass whereby we gave all children what they need to become productive adults.

I understand that "poverty" in the United States doesn't look quite the same as "poverty" in a third world country. Our students consider themselves truly poor if they can't afford an iPod or the latest pair of $100 jeans. But we have children who live on the cold streets of Detroit, not on the streets in tropical Haiti. We have young teens who sell their bodies for a warm place to stay and a Big Mac. Does the child who goes to bed hungry in the good ole US of A feel any less hungry than the poor kid in Haiti?

Until we stop slashing school lunch programs, until we keep child molesters permanently behind bars, until we ensure the safety of teen sex slaves, until we make sure every child lives in a warm, safe place, with enough food to eat and access to a quality education, then we are not a society who values children.

It's just rhetoric.