The Other Side of the So-Called Trophy Culture

A recent Real Sports broadcast, summarized here, declared that our nation has a problem with a "trophy culture" that coddles kids by handing out trophies for merely showing up for games, or perhaps even simply for signing up for a team whether or not they even come to a practice. At the conclusion, Bryant Gumbel expressed that he didn't see it as a big deal, and was told by the correspondent that it was somehow emblematic of a larger social problem. I find myself far more sympathetic to Gumbel's position.

If you've ever seen very young children play a team sport, like Soccer, you might be reminded of kittens chasing a string. No matter how many times you tell them to hold to their positions, most and sometimes all of the kids will simply chase the ball no matter where it is on the field. At that age you will find some kids who are skilled beyond their years, but for the most part I don't see much benefit in treating a game as if it's a meaningful contest. Let the kids have fun, don't worry about the score, and focus on building their interest and skills for future years.

As kids get a bit older, and they divide into groups of better-skilled and lesser-skilled players, a new question arises: Are you going to give every child some time on the field, or are you going to instead focus on getting the win? When the focus is on the win, stories of bad conduct by adults -- don't take it from me: Here's Real Sports on the issue:

Real Sports found a person by the name of Ashley Merryman to play the part of the scold against tropies. My first reaction to her statements was, "Kids aren't that stupid," or, to put it another way, kids know the difference between getting a trophy for participation, as compared to getting a trophy for their performance. I thought that perhaps somebody had researched the issue and discovered that somebody had -- as explained by none other than Ashley Merryman herself:

By age 4 or 5, children aren’t fooled by all the trophies. They are surprisingly accurate in identifying who excels and who struggles. Those who are outperformed know it and give up, while those who do well feel cheated when they aren’t recognized for their accomplishments. They, too, may give up.

So the issue really isn't that kids are fooled into thinking that their performance exceeds their actual skill set by getting participation trophies -- they know the difference. Having undermined her own argument, Merryman tries to turn it around by arguing that top performers might "give up" if they see other kids get meaningless trophies -- to which I respond, "That's nonsense". When I look at youth sports these days, I see kids performing at the highest levels that I've ever seen, far beyond the performance of the same age cohort when I was a kid. What evidence does Merryman offer to convince me not to believe my lying eyes? That would be... nothing.

At this point the case against participation trophies would seem to be that, past the age of five or six, the kids see them for what they are, and it costs a lot of money to hand out hundreds or thousands of meaningless trophies. Merryman can see that, but just can't stop herself from catastrophizing: "We have to stop letting the Trophy-Industrial Complex run our children’s lives." That would be an argument that's supported by the facts, while extrapolating that participation trophies are emblematic of the ruination of our society, the decline and fall of our civilization... not so much.

Don't Confuse High Stakes Testing With High Expectations

Frank Bruni recently expressed concern, in the usual hackneyed terms, that kids these days are "coddled". Some sports give trophies for participation, or end games early when the difference in score reaches a defined threshold. A middle school near Boston is concerned that kids' feelings might get hurt if they find out that they weren't invited to parties. Some kids get stressed by tests. Bruni complains that "Many kids at all grade levels are Bubble-Wrapped in a culture that praises effort nearly as much as it does accomplishment." As anybody, including Bruni, should know, people like Bruni have been writing this sort of column for generations.

All of Bruni's complaints are to set a context for his criticism of people who object to the high stakes standardized testing model imposed upon the nation's schools. Bruni conflates high stakes standardized tests with "tougher instruction [that should] not be rejected simply because it makes children feel inadequate, and that the impulse to coddle kids not eclipse the imperative to challenge them." While Bruni insists, that Common Core is "a laudable set of guidelines that emphasize analytical thinking over rote memorization", even he admits that "n instances its implementation has been flawed, and its accompanying emphasis on testing certainly warrants debate." Yet here he is, calling those who want to engage in the debate paranoiacs and whiners.

Then there’s the outcry, equally reflective of the times, from adults who assert that kids aren’t enjoying school as much; feel a level of stress that they shouldn’t have to; are being judged too narrowly; and doubt their own mettle.

Aren’t aspects of school supposed to be relatively mirthless? Isn’t stress an acceptable byproduct of reaching higher and digging deeper? Aren’t certain fixed judgments inevitable? And isn’t mettle established through hard work?

I don't mind at all the notion that school should be challenging. But what Bruni is overlooking is how standardized testing has displaced a lot of traditional classroom teaching and learning, or that the insistence that children master skills at earlier ages is not necessarily consistent with the students' cognitive development. After pushing more and more traditional first grade material into kindergarten, we're now hearing proposals to raise the age for kindergarten enrollment. If you end up with a kindergarten full of kids who, under the former system, would largely have been in first grade, what are you actually accomplishing?

Here's something it shouldn't take very long to figure out: When you tell a teacher, "Your ranking as a teacher, your ability to keep your job and the amount you are paid depends on how your students do on a series of standardized tests," the odds are that the teacher is going to devote a great deal of effort and classroom time to improving student performance on the test. Bruni ridicules a parent's complaint that as a result of that sort of focus on testing, his eight year old's class was left with "no room for imagination or play". Does Bruni not understand that children can be challenged academically, yet be encouraged in their imagination? Does Bruni not understand that children need breaks in their lessons during the course of a school day? That children can learn from play activities? It would seem not.

Bruni references David Coleman, "noe of the principal architects of the Common Core" as asserting that he favors self-esteem, but wants to "redefine self-esteem as something achieved through hard work". It's not that self-esteem cannot be derived from hard work, but that's not really what Coleman is talking about. In the schoolyard, self esteem is on the whole negatively correlated with academic performance. Bruni's ridicule of parents who are concerned about their parents feelings is, in a sense, more relevant than Coleman's goal, because Bruni's approach does not involve somehow changing human nature. When Coleman talks about how students "will not enjoy every step of it" but "if it takes them somewhere big and real, they’ll discover a satisfaction that redeems the sweat", he seems to be talking about the end of a very long process. If you don't find a way to let kids learn on an incremental basis that their hard work will be rewarded, you're not going to create an effective learning environment for most kids.

Bruni also references Marc Tucker of the National Center on Education and the Economy, who has stated, "ile American parents are pulling their kids out of tests because the results make the kids feel bad, parents in other countries are looking at the results and asking themselves how they can help their children do better." But that's not the actual issue. Although certain factions of school reformers like to point to nations that obsess over test scores, holding them out as a model for the nation, it's very clear that we don't have the sort of culture that will cause us to follow the lead of South Korea, with kids leaving school to head over to private academies where they spend additional hours being prepped for tests, and we don't really want to follow the lead of nations that produce kids who are very good at taking tests but not much good at thinking outside the margins of a carefully darkened oval.

If you want good public schools, you don't need to do much. You need to make the profession of teaching sufficiently well respected and remunerated that you attract above average students into the profession, you want to make the task of classroom teaching rewarding, and you want parents who will reinforce the need for their kids to attend school, study and do their homework, behave in class, and achieve academically. When you do that you don't need to obsess over test stores - you can use standardized tests in their traditional manner, to assess individual and group performance with an eye toward improvement, and with no need for teachers to "teach to the test" because the goal is to obtain an accurate assessment as opposed to an artificially inflated score that reflects intensive teaching to the test at the expense of a rich classroom experience.

Ah, but high-stakes standardized testing is so much easier for school administrators and politicians, the ones who have positioned themselves to get prizes for "participation" - a large, steady paycheck with no consequences at all for the failure of schools, teachers or students. And it's so much easier to point to a computer-generated list of scores and pretend that you have objectively evaluated a teacher or school than it is to work hard.

The Working Poor Have Bigger Problems Than Single Parenthood

I was tempted to dissent David Brooks' recent piece on how boys are faring in school, his comparison of an unruly boy, chained down by "culturally homogenous schools", to Henry V as depicted by Shakespeare - first as a wild child in Henry IV, later as an accomplished leader in Henry V. According to Brooks, it seems schools would prefer to be teaching "a reflective Hamlet".

By about the third week of nursery school, Henry’s teacher would be sending notes home saying that Henry “had another hard day today.” He was disruptive during circle time. By midyear, there’d be sly little hints dropped that maybe Henry’s parents should think about medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Many of the other boys are on it, and they find school much easier.

What say you, Charles Pierce?

At which point, Henry IV, in all of his parts, and being pissed off with that whole Percy family squabble, would have the nursery school teacher drawn and quartered, her head hung on Traitor's Gate for a month, and I probably shouldn't give our country's school "reformers" any ideas.

But as tempting as it was to respond to Brooks' editorial with full-bore sarcasm, what I found problematic was less his dubious resort to Shakespeare and more the fact that he has difficulty maintaining a consistent thesis. Instead, by the end he becomes somewhat incoherent:

Schools have to engage people as they are. That requires leaders who insist on more cultural diversity in school: not just teachers who celebrate cooperation, but other teachers who celebrate competition; not just teachers who honor environmental virtues, but teachers who honor military virtues; not just curriculums that teach how to share, but curriculums that teach how to win and how to lose; not just programs that work like friendship circles, but programs that work like boot camp.

Seriously - the way we're going to engage a young Henry V in school, keep him out of trouble, keep him from rebelling, is by sending him to a school that embraces "military virtues" and resembles a "boot camp"? Is this a half-hearted defense of KIPP-type schools with their extensive behavior codes? Brooks seriously believes his young Henry V's will go unmedicated and be educationally successful in such schools?

But the incoherence runs deeper. This is the same David Brooks who has lectured us that a small child's ability to resist marshmallows is a harbinger of his future. In the past he proposed that schools focus on teaching children "to master the sort of self-control that leads to success". That's consistent with the military model he appears to be half-endorsing, but again that's not going to work with a Henry V.

The rich, privileged, self-indulgent Henry V can grab as many marshmallows as he wants, as his future is assured - he doesn't have to care about the rules. The less intellectually gifted, less economically fortunate Henry V is not going to take well to "marshmallow resistance training." Either way, while doing an admirable job of criticizing the current educational system for not catering to a Henry V (while nonetheless doing very well by way of boys like David Brooks and Hamlet), Brooks doesn't actually explain how we could create schools that can simultaneously inspire Henry V to resist marshmallows while also inspiring a young David Brooks to strive for the day he can take an AP literature class focused on the works of Shakespeare.

Brooks has also told us what he, himself, thinks of kids like Henry V:

Similarly, in every high school there are jocks, cheerleaders and regular kids who vaguely sense that their natural enemies are the brooding poets who go off to become English majors. These prom kings and queens may leave their adolescent godhood and go off to work as underpaid sales reps despite their coldly gracious spouses and effortlessly slender kids, but they will still remember their adolescent opposites and become conservatives. They will experience surges of orgiastic triumphalism when Sean Hannity eviscerates the scuffed-shoed intellectuals who have as much personal courage as a French chipmunk in retreat.

French chipmunks in retreat... Funny, right?

Brooks' subsequent column inspired me to revisit the subject. You won't believe this but, according to Brooks, over the past thirty years rich people have come to have a lot of discretionary income, and poor people have not. Seriously!

Affluent parents also invest more money in their children. Over the last 40 years upper-income parents have increased the amount they spend on their kids’ enrichment activities, like tutoring and extra curriculars, by $5,300 a year. The financially stressed lower classes have only been able to increase their investment by $480, adjusted for inflation.

The explanation for this is, once again, Brooks' theory that poor people have bad morals.

A long series of cultural, economic and social trends have merged to create this sad state of affairs. Traditional social norms were abandoned, meaning more children are born out of wedlock.

Wait a minute - aren't we supposed to support Henry V's sowing of his wild oats? Or is the "traditional value" at issue the notion that Henry will do so at the whorehouse while "good girls" remain chaste? "Guard your marshmallows, girls, Henry V is on the prowl."

Their single parents simply have less time and resources to prepare them for a more competitive world.

So the only children struggling are those from single parent homes? There are no "poorer kids" from two family homes? Fascinating stuff.

Working-class jobs were decimated, meaning that many parents are too stressed to have the energy, time or money to devote to their children.

What Brooks apparently means is that working class jobs that support a middle class lifestyle have been decimated, even if that's not quite what he says. How did that happen? Who knows? Perhaps it has something to do with single parenthood?

Affluent, intelligent people are now more likely to marry other energetic, intelligent people.

Unlike past eras during which intelligent, affluent people sought out unintelligent, indigent spouses?

They raise energetic, intelligent kids in self-segregated, cultural ghettoes where they know little about and have less influence upon people who do not share their blessings.

The rich now live in ghettoes? Oh, life is so cruel. Remember, back in the day, when the rich and poor lived near each other, sharing land and crops, or on different floors of the same opulent building? Ah... memories.

The political system directs more money to health care for the elderly while spending on child welfare slides.

So... the solution here is to spend less money on sick old people? To increase spending on programs for poor children - and if so, what programs?

Brooks insists that to change the unfortunate status quo, people will "have to make some pretty uncomfortable decisions":

Liberals are going to have to be willing to champion norms that say marriage should come before childrearing and be morally tough about it.

Yes, because once liberals get serious about teen pregnancy, like red state conservatives, we'll see... huge increases in teen pregnancy? But wait, David, I thought that was a big part of the problem. (I know, I know - when you get you facts wrong it's a joke. You're kidding the liberals.)

Conservatives are going to have to be willing to accept tax increases or benefit cuts so that more can be spent on the earned-income tax credit and other programs that benefit the working class.

If we're talking Republicans, let's see... what will they choose. Oh yeah, benefit cuts.¹ That bit about "spending more on the poor" is apt to get lost in the wash.

Political candidates will have to spend less time trying to exploit class divisions and more time trying to remedy them — less time calling their opponents out of touch elitists, and more time coming up with agendas that comprehensively address the problem.

You mean, by identifying a social problem and deciding it can be cured by throwing money at it? Yeah, there's no chance that Brooks' proposal for spending more "on the earned-income tax credit and other programs that benefit the working class" will be demagogued....

Political candidates will have to spend less time trying to exploit class divisions and more time trying to remedy them....

So at the end of a dissertation on the poor morals of the poor, and how we nonetheless need to spend more money trying to help poor children, Brooks believes that we can propose taxing wealthier people or cutting their benefits to pay for those new programs without anybody raising the specter of class warfare? No concerns about giving money to undeserving bleah people?

...less time calling their opponents out of touch elitists, and more time coming up with agendas that comprehensively address the problem.

Why not both? Seriously, Brooks wants to clean up some of the over-the-top rhetoric in modern politics. Fair enough. But it's not like that's either new or the real problem. The problem is that one party is doing a middling job at creating the policies necessary to help our nation avoid significant future problems, and the other party is actively obstructing the little that might otherwise be accomplished.

There is absolutely no reason why Brooks cannot call on politicians from both parties to start addressing the issues, and take them to task if they offer rhetoric or demagoguery instead of actual policy proposals. It wouldn't hurt if Brooks offered some policy proposals of his own as a starting point but, I guess, that would be above his pay grade?
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1. I'm reminded of the old Far Side cartoon... "Conservatives are going to have to be willing to accept blah blah blah benefit cuts blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah."

Early Childhood Intervention Matters

I was reminded the other day of a sad fact - we have been experimenting with school reforms of one type or another for many decades and, once you expand the reform to a statistically meaningful population, every single reform has failed. Other than its obsessive focus on handing taxpayer money to private testing companies and for-profit charter schools, there's nothing to distinguish the present round of reforms from past rounds. The biggest lesson appears to be that if you provide struggling children with significantly more hours in a structured learning environment, or provide quality tutoring, you can increase academic performance in the short-term, but those increases are likely to fade once that extra support is removed.

A recent column by Nicholas Kristof describes this phenomenon:

“This is where inequality starts,” said Kathleen McCartney, the dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, as she showed me a chart demonstrating that even before kindergarten there are significant performance gaps between rich and poor students. Those gaps then widen further in school.

“Schooling after the second grade plays only a minor role in creating or reducing gaps,” [economist James] Heckman argues in an important article this year in American Educator. “It is imperative to change the way we look at education. We should invest in the foundation of school readiness from birth to age 5.”

Kristof notes that, although there's reason to doubt that there will necessarily be lasting improvement in test scores from a focus on early learning, there may be strong social and society gains:

One of the most studied initiatives in this area was the Perry Preschool program, which worked with disadvantaged black children in Michigan in the 1960s. Compared with a control group, children who went through the Perry program were 22 percent more likely to finish high school and were arrested less than half as often for felonies. They were half as likely to receive public assistance and three times as likely to own their own homes....

One of the Harvard scholars I interviewed, David Deming, compared the outcomes of children who were in Head Start with their siblings who did not participate. Professor Deming found that critics were right that the Head Start advantage in test scores faded quickly. But, in other areas, perhaps more important ones, he found that Head Start had a significant long-term impact: the former Head Start participants are significantly less likely than siblings to repeat grades, to be diagnosed with a learning disability, or to suffer the kind of poor health associated with poverty. Head Start alumni were more likely than their siblings to graduate from high school and attend college.

Our society seems inclined to approach educational issues from an "all or nothing" perspective. A few months ago I read an exchange between Bryan Caplan and "the Tiger Mom", which largely boiled down to Caplan arguing that whatever parents do a child's academic performance is likely not to be significantly affected, versus the "Tiger Mom" philosophy that with aggressive, controlling over-parenting and demand for excellence, any child can become an educational super-achiever. The truth lies somewhere in between, probably more on the Caplan side (because outside of Lake Wobegon half of the children will actually be below average).

Consider, for example, piano lessons - if you, as a parent, provide the opportunity for your child to learn how to play piano, even if they never make it to Carnegie Hall they will have learned a skill that they can continue to use for life. If you do not, odds are your child will never learn to play the piano. The skills that help people achieve in school and society are largely learned - if you provide a small child a robust set of cognitive tools, you increase the odds that the child will succeed within your society, but the longer you wait to introduce the tools to the child the less likely it is that the child will learn them, let alone master them. Delay also creates the opportunity for a child to learn the wrong lessons, to internalize rules and practices that are maladaptive.

A Caplan-style, "Don't worry, it will even out in the end" approach is not unreasonable for people who are middle class or above, and who live in strong communities, have stable jobs and incomes, and whose children are immersed in a culture that rewards educational achievement, college attendance, and ultimately "getting a good job". Children who live in violent, dangerous communities, for whom fear is a part of daily life, do not enjoy a similar luxury. If you don't attempt to influence their environment, they will never have the opportunity to reach their potential.

Our society seems fixated on the idea that education makes you smarter. That if you force reading on a child who may be too young to cognitively process the lessons, you'll end up teaching strong reading skills that will last a lifetime. That any child can be "college material", that everybody will benefit from a college education, and that everybody can perform jobs that perform a high level of cognitive function.

On the one hand, if people work hard and push themselves, they truly can accomplish a lot more than they would if they take a relaxed (or, if you will, lazy) view toward life, education and career. On the other hand, work that is cognitively easy for some people will be a constant struggle for others and, no matter how much effort the exert, beyond the reach of still others. That's true across the board - every person has subjects or activities that are beyond their skill set, and beyond what they can reasonably hope to master. Education does not make you smarter, but it can expand your horizons, allowing you to identify those areas in which you can achieve some level of mastery and to maximize your performance.

Playground Safety Isn't a Bad Thing

John Tierney appears to have no love for internal consistency. In complaining that modern playgrounds are too safe he argues,

While some psychologists — and many parents — have worried that a child who suffered a bad fall would develop a fear of heights, studies have shown the opposite pattern: A child who’s hurt in a fall before the age of 9 is less likely as a teenager to have a fear of heights.

What does this mean in relation to modern, "safe" playgrounds?

“There is no clear evidence that playground safety measures have lowered the average risk on playgrounds,” said David Ball, a professor of risk management at Middlesex University in London. He noted that the risk of some injuries, like long fractures of the arm, actually increased after the introduction of softer surfaces on playgrounds in Britain and Australia.

The problem, then, is that safe playgrounds are making children less fearful of heights? While it's easy to believe that minor bumps, scrapes and bruises can help a child recognize that certain activities that look scary are reasonably safe, there's no reason to believe that the same holds true for serious injuries. Tierney chooses not to identify or link to any of the "studies" that support his assertions, but I doubt it's as binary an issue as he would have us believe. As kids are still getting injured, albeit in many cases less seriously, they should still be building a tolerance for heights.

“I think safety surfaces are a godsend,” [Adrian Benepe, NYC parks commissioner] said. “I suspect that parents who have to deal with concussions and broken arms wouldn’t agree that playgrounds have become too safe.”

Tierney blames the move for safer playground equipment and safety surfaces on lawyers, purporting that "Fear of litigation led New York City officials to remove seesaws, merry-go-rounds and the ropes that young Tarzans used to swing from one platform to another", linking to this article:

Monkey bars are disappearing in all parts of America, as safety guidelines, guarantees of accessibility for the handicapped and the play industry's self-policing have coalesced to force them out.

"The biggest reason is that this old playground equipment is not safe," said Dan Wagner, vice president of Landscape Structures Inc., a major manufacturer of new-style equipment based in Delano, Minn. "It's going on everywhere in the country."...

Many doctors agree that monkey bars are dangerous. "Of all the equipment in parks, it seems like the jungle gyms are worst in terms of injuries," said Ann DiMaio, director of pediatric emergency room services at New York Hospital/Cornell University Medical Center.

The article does mention fear of litigation, but does not suggest that those fears as opposed to the changes being principally motivated by improved safety and compliance with updated safety guidelines. The most serious injury mentioned in the article was a broken collarbone, with no indication that anybody even hinted at suing.

Here's the deal: Yes, safety standards change over time. Yes, as a result a lot of things that used to be less safe and more fun are now more safe and, in some case, less fun. Yes, that means if you ignore modern safety standards and regulations, you open yourself up to potential litigation when somebody is injured as a result of your bad choices. But Tierney's own source makes plain that the principal reason for making playgrounds safer is nothing more than that - diminishing the frequency and severity of injuries. That's a bad thing?

Also, while Tierney suggests that modern playground equipment is less fun than historic playground equipment, he misses a number of important issues. The first is highlighted in the article he references:

Dr. Harold Koplewicz, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at the Schneider Children's Hospital of Long Island Jewish Medical Center, said the important thing is to give children of all ages as great a sense of freedom as possible. If a parent is screaming at a child to be careful on the monkey bars, it defeats this goal.

"We all had glorious times on the jungle gym when we were kids," Dr. Koplewicz said. "But for today's child, there is no loss. It is better for him not to be watched all the time."

The second is that children engage in a great deal of play that does not involve playgrounds and play structures. Tierney confuses novelty with sustained interest:

Still, sometimes there’s nothing quite like being 10 feet off the ground, as a new generation was discovering the other afternoon at Fort Tryon Park. A soft rubber surface carpeted the pavement, but the jungle gym of Mr. Stern’s youth was still there. It was the prime destination for many children, including those who’d never seen one before, like Nayelis Serrano, a 10-year-old from the South Bronx who was visiting her cousin.

There are monkey bars in a school playground near where I used to live, along with a couple of modern play structures, an older wood structure, swings, basketball hoops, and other amusements. The monkey bars, most often, are abandoned. As were the monkey bars at my childhood elementary school.

For all of Tierney's concern about a loss of opportunity for "risky play" on playgrounds, I'm left wondering how much time he has actually spent watching kids play. I took my daughter to a playground a couple of years ago, and while she was enjoying the structure, slides, tunnels, and was practicing jumping or dropping to the ground from what to a four-year-old was still a considerable height, a couple of tweens were also playing on the structure. And I do mean on - canopies and covered slides may be intended to keep the elements out and kids contained, but for older kids they can be just another platform to climb on. As for the concern,

“Older children are discouraged from taking healthy exercise on playgrounds because they have been designed with the safety of the very young in mind,” Dr. Ball said. “Therefore, they may play in more dangerous places, or not at all.”

At my childhood elementary school, the play structure was for "the little kids". Older kids were simply expected to find other ways to play, and the older kids did exactly that. Further, the idea that a school can provide a play structure of sufficient size and with sufficient variety to keep kids interested in sustained play, day after day, year after year, is absurd. If they're occasional amusements, fretting that they won't be the principal source of a child's exercise, moreso an older child's exercise, is similarly absurd.

"Hey, Kid - Get Off Your Lawn!"

Talk about your crotchety old people.....

Why Don't Kids Walk to School

An editorial in the Washington Post moans that children don't walk or ride their bikes to school any more. True enough, but contrary to the author's thesis (and hyperbole) it's not an issue of hovering parents. I've discussed this phenomenon before:

When I was a kid... we were still able to go to the park alone or with friends, walk to and from school, and engage in a lot of unsupervised activities even as young children. A big part of that was that our friends were doing the same thing - there were kids everywhere. Some of those kids had parents, older siblings or babysitters around, so there were older, more responsible eyes watching the activity. As we've moved our activities indoors, and have restricted kids from unsupervised activities, the odds have again changed. It's not unusual to drive by parks in my town and not see a single person there, or to see one or two families present. If a child goes there alone, the odds are that the child will spend some time with no other adult or child present. That significantly changes the risk to a child.

There's also the fact that as communities have become more dependent upon busing and cars for transportation to school, the "neighborhood school" may be quite far removed from the neighborhood. I'll grant, when I was a kid I rode my bicycle to school across a relatively busy, divided roadway - but that road has nothing on the type of traffic my daughter would face if she rode her bicycle to school. (She's still too young to do that even by historic measure.) The lack of sidewalks along the way would also make it very difficult for her to walk, even if she were old enough to cross that road unsupervised - or even if she were accompanied by a parent. And it's almost three miles away, about an hour to walk.

And that's with her going to a school comparatively close to home. Her "neighborhood" school isn't close to the neighborhood. Yes, there are schools that are closer than the default (including the one she attends), but you can't look at the @4.5 mile, @90 minute walk to school and tell me that the school board was concerned about walkable distances. My childhood school was not my neighborhood school - it was about a third of the distance from my home as my child's "neighborhood" school; triple that distance and I would have been taking the bus (public transportation, not a school bus) as I had to do during the winter. (My neighborhood school was less than half a mile away, an easy walk or bike ride down quiet, residential streets.)

So let's not pretend this is about individual choices, helicopter parents, smothering, etc. - and let's recognize that if we want to shift back to a culture in which kids play outside with minimal supervision, walk to school, etc., we're going to have to make a serious investment in recreating actual neighborhood schools and in providing a safe level of supervision while the numbers of children increase. Let's not blame individuals for societal changes that are well outside of individual control.

Wait, You Mean... Losing a Parent is a Bad Thing?

It's all so confusing. First, relying upon the best social data he can muster, David Brooks tells us,

[Sonia Sotomayor's] father died when she was 9, leaving one such gap [in her relationships]. (It is amazing how many people who suffer parental loss between the ages of 9 and 13 go on to become astounding high achievers.)

(Usual challenge: Okay, David... how many?) But then Michael Gerson insists,

[T]he fatherless are some of the most disadvantaged, betrayed people in our society, prone to delinquency, poverty and academic failure.

I can almost imagine a debate between Gerson and Brooks over whether having your parent die is better for you than divorce, or whether divorcing parents should also aim for the "age 9 through 13" sweet spot. Fortunately I am able to stop myself.

Gerson's imagining "the good old days" when people engaged in "courtship", married for life, and raised kids in intact marriages. I suspect, though, he would be just as happy with the other "good old days" when marriages were arranged and divorces were available only to the wealthy and influential.

While it's interesting to see the overlap in "thinking" style between Brooks (with his "hasty generalization") and Gerson (with his trust in a shallow conventional wisdom that suits his argument), life isn't that simple. Many children of divorce (or whose parents never marry) do "just fine, thank you very much," and don't need Gerson's condescension. Some kids of divorced parents, for economic reasons, end up living in a less safe, higher crime neighborhood, attending more dangerous, lower quality schools, and having less supervision after school. For others, the roots of bad behavior may lie in what comes before a parent pulls them out of a drunken, drug-addicted or violent household. Some unfortunate kids experience both. Yet Gerson can't see past the parents' break-up.

When possible, I do think that kids are better off being raised in a healthy two-parent household. When that's not possible, either because the household is physically or psychologically dangerous, kids are better off when the non-custodial parent pays adequate, timely child support.

Shifting subjects a bit, Gerson tells us that

the average age at which people marry has grown later; it is now about 26 for women, 28 for men.

He later contends,

Divorce rates trend downward until leveling off in the early 20s. But people who marry after 27 tend to have less happy marriages - perhaps because partners are set in their ways or have unrealistically high standards. The marital sweet spot seems to be in the early to mid-20s.

So... everything would be better if we could just convince the average guy to marry one year earlier? Seriously, do you think that the statistics for divorce based on age at the time of marriage might be skewed by second (and subsequent) marriages, that are well-documented to have higher rates of divorce?

Teen marriage is generally a bad idea, with much higher rates of divorce. Romeo and Juliet were, in fact, young fools.

I realize Gerson's trying to be amusing, but his quip highlights how he yearns for the "Ozzie and Harriet" version of the good old days, whether or not it actually existed, as opposed to what occurred through much of human history. Juliet had been promised to another man. She was getting married, even if not to Romeo.

In an alternate version of Romeo and Juliet, they hate each other but their parents decide that their marriage will be a useful way to mend the rift between the families and bring together their wealth, power and influence, and so it is done. As they live in Fourteenth Century Italy, divorce is not an option. But Romeo doesn't mind so much because marriage to Juliet is his duty... and, consistent with his station in life, he has a mistress or two on the side. And the children turn out okay because, as their parents remain married, they have a consistent caregiver in the form of their... nurse. Ah, the good old days.

Reading the Fine Print

Thinking about buying software to protect your children when they're online?

Parents who install a leading brand of software to monitor their kids' online activities may be unwittingly allowing the company to read their children's chat messages — and sell the marketing data gathered.

Software sold under the Sentry and FamilySafe brands can read private chats conducted through Yahoo, MSN, AOL and other services, and send back data on what kids are saying about such things as movies, music or video games. The information is then offered to businesses seeking ways to tailor their marketing messages to kids.

Apparently you can opt out, but how would you even know you needed to do so?

What If The Children See?

Apparently there's turmoil in Maryland over a plan to build some sort of slot machine "gambling parlor... next to a mall popular with families." Would this be acceptable if the mall were unpopular with families? I mean, really.

Are we going to ban billboards for gambling, "adult entertainment" and the like from highways that are "popular with families"? Ban lottery tickets from gas stations frequented by families? Ban school raffles and church bingo? Really - once you make the decision that gambling's cool and can raise lots of tax money, why fret over whether you can see a gambling establishment from... I guess parts of the parking lot of one of our nation's many giant, indoor temples of consumerism.

Is the concern that the few gamblers who actually turn a profit against a field of "one armed bandits" will skip over to the mall, where awe-struck children will immediately recognize that they're spending gambling winnings and yearn for the day when they, also, have that many quarters to spend?

Seriously, if legalized gambling is as horrible and corrupting as the editorial suggests, why limit it to racetracks - why should there even be racetracks or state lotteries? And if it's not, why so uptight about the kiddies figuring out that people gamble?

Bureaucratic Red Tape

Odd statement of the day:

An online classified ad offering a "free" teenager appeared on a Salt Lake City television station's Web site Saturday afternoon.... The ad listed a "hardworking young man" who was being given away because "we're low on money, no room in the house," said Mary Workman, 52, of Amarillo, Texas, a former Salt Lake City resident who saw the ad as she browsed online....

Workman said the ad showed two pictures of a young man who appeared to be 15 to 17 years old.

She said she called the Spanish Fork number listed on the ad and a woman with an accent answered, apparently an adult affirming that the child was available. A man then got on the phone, also confirming the child was to be given away.

"That just totally blew me away," she said. "You can't give your child away, not without paperwork."

Apparently it's a multi-part form, you keep the canary copy, the blue and pink copies are for...

Making a Success of Foster Care

Britain's model of child protection and foster care (which sounds a lot like ours) is compared to Germany's:

Almost three quarters of [children in foster care] will leave care with no formal qualifications. Only one per cent will go on to enter any kind of university education. One fifth of looked-after children are homeless two years after leaving care; 25 per cent of our prison population has been through the care system. Things have to be really bad at home before care looks like a better option.

Yet in other countries the picture is very different. In Germany looked-after children do extremely well, with 95 per cent of children in the German care system going on to vocational education. Crime committed by looked-after children in Germany runs at 5 per cent of the rate of crime committed by those in our care.

This comes at a price:

Money is important. In Germany most looked-after children live in small community homes, with fewer than 16 residents. By contrast, more than two-thirds of our looked-after children are placed in foster families which cost less than a quarter of a residential placement in Germany.

But as compared to the up-front cost of effective foster care, are diminished productivity among foster care graduates and increased cost of incarceration the proverbial "pound of cure"?

But What If God Makes You Infertile?

The New York Times has a rather vapid piece on same-sex marriage, Using Biology, Not Religion, to Argue Against Same-Sex Marriage. The authors present the views of a Christian couple who contend that their opposition to same-sex marriage arises from biology, not their religious beliefs:

“It takes a man and a woman to create children and thus create a family,” Mrs. Galloway, 60, told a legislative panel in Connecticut last year as it was considering a bill to legalize same-sex marriage.

Except....

For the Galloways, the notion that same-sex couples should not marry because they cannot have children is complicated by their own story. They married nearly 17 years ago, and tried to have children. When they couldn’t conceive, they became foster parents in the hope of adopting.

If the argument truly is that biology dictates the answer - couples who can't have children shouldn't be allowed to marry - why should the Galloways be permitted to remain married? Why should any infertile person be allowed to marry? If the solution to God's will is adoption, as the Galloways suggest at least in relation to their own inability to bear children, how is their marriage different from that of a same-sex couple that adopts?

What of a fertile couple that chooses not to have children, or an infertile couple with no intention of adopting - should they be allowed to marry? How does "biology" justify their marriage?

It's sleight of hand - the argument is quietly shifted from biology - the capacity to reproduce - to "gender roles":

The notion that gender roles are unimportant in raising children is “bunk,” added Mrs. Galloway. “It is not an accident that it takes a man and a woman coming together to create a child,” she said.

Certainly, it's not an "accident" that species that reproduce sexually engage in sexual reproduction. That's a given. But what do we make of "biology" when mommy mantis bites off daddy's head or mommy wolf spider eats daddy. Even if we stick to humans, the mere fact that a species engages in sexual reproduction does not necessarily require that the father have any involvement in the child's life past the point of conception. And that's true even when parents have the best of intentions:

Mr. Galloway, whose father died when he was 3, said being raised solely by women - his mother and his aunts - hindered his development and altered his sense of self-worth.

The Galloway's argument is premised in sociology, not biology. And even in that context, its based upon personal experience and opinion, not empirical data.

This emphasis on biology roughly parallels the idea that "if we call it 'intelligent design' it's not really creationism." When the religious argument doesn't gain traction, spin it into something you can try to rebrand as science, even if there's no actual science involved.

Texas Acts Against Polygamy

Is the primary purpose of this costly move to protect the children, or to make polygamists think twice about continuing their expansion into Texas?

To me it looks a lot like something that was planned long in advance, while politicians waited for an appropriate triggering event to take their pre-planned action.

How Dare Mothers Work

When I first read about Monica Goodling's student essay about how poorly our society treats children, I thought it was an undergraduate essay which demonstrated decent writing skills. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, I thought that it might have been written as a persuasive paper as opposed to a balanced treatment of her subject matter. But even assuming it was meant to reflect the full scope of her research skills, it wouldn't be the first time an undergraduate fell into the trap of relying exclusively on sources that support his or her thesis, and believing that constitutes "research". Except, reading some more recent news coverage about Ms. Goodling's law school, I realized that I wasn't reading her undergraduate work. It was a paper she wrote while in law school.

This paper begs to be ridiculed.

For centuries it has been known that the greatest duty of being a parent is to raise the child. And yet, study after study shows that millions of America's children are neglected every day. The reason for this failure to act must be due to a change in parents' philosophies. It is there, in their innermost parts, that the devaluation of their children begins.

From the time that America was first founded until around the 1950s, our society has been described as a "collectivist" culture balanced with a "communitarian" individualism.

These terms simply mean that while parents were individualistic in spirit, their own self-fulfillment and desires were secondary to the welfare of their social organizations and institutions. Hence, "doing one's duty" within a family was elevated above personal goals and independence.

She is seriously arguing that the modern concept of childhood existed from the dawn of American culture, and only started to fade away in the 1950's. Sure. The children who labored six or seven days a week in factories or in farmers' fields had it great, and we should all be so lucky.

Being a child of a single parent means that, often, one is deprived of many things a child needs to flourish and grow into productive citizens: attention, proper medical care, love, intellectual stimulation, financial support, security, authoritative guidance, structures, and time. The maxim that "quantity" is not important as long as a parent supplies "quality time," has been described mockingly as a satisfying delusion. Another author wrote, "Deeply embedded in the disorder of our society and the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots is the most poignant have-not of all--a child without two parents."

However, if Dan Quayle really was correct, then why would so many women be willing to give birth to a child absent marriage? For many, babies are a ticket to independence, a ticket sponsored by public assistance programs. But the ultimate cost falls on the child itself.

What a school this must be where everybody automatically knows what Dan Quayle has asserted - yes, that's her first (and last) reference to him.

The "haves" versus "have-nots" observation is interesting, because throughout history that's probably the biggest predictor of how idyllic a childhood is apt to be. The wealthy have, on the whole, always provided a better childhood environment for their offspring. The poor, on the whole, do they best they can within their means. That has improved during the course of this century, where the children of the poor have access to public education and are restricted from working the types of jobs and hours of employment many of them would have historically suffered.

But wow... women choosing to have a child outside of marriage. Is Goodling presupposing that the fathers of their children are on bended knee, offering their hands in marriage, and these women are stubbornly refusing to consider that option? Does she think pregnant women are hot commodities on the singles scene, and that young men can't wait to meet and marry them? Because if she doesn't think either of those things, she is speaking of the exceptional case, not the norm. And then the question becomes, is she saying that single mothers shouldn't "choose life"?

In addition to the contributing factors of attitude changes, divorce, single parent homes, and fatherlessness, one other factor contributes to the devaluation of America's children. That is the increasing number of married women who leave the role of being a full-time mom in order to contribute to the Gross National Product. They toss their children into "child care," but often leave the job of mothering their child less than fully compensated. Like the children's game of hot potato, the child himself bounces from person to person, often undergoing development in the midst of casual acquaintances.

Ah yes, the much anticipated screed against daycare. And Goodling speaks to a mythic history in which mothers didn't have to work and were free to raise their own children. She has, in the space of a few words, erased a history of the wealthy relying upon nannies and tutors to provide child care, and of poor women leaving their children in ad hoc care settings such that they could work. And as one would expect, she places no responsibility for child care on the father.

Some of Monica's incredible ideas to resolve these problems:

• Revising welfare to cut off additional aid for additional children seems an obvious economically valid goal, but it alone is not enough.
• Sex education classes should be abstinence-based, and students should be taught how to resist sexual pressure.
• [T]eenage mothers be required to live with their families or in a residential care group home, in order to receive welfare benefits.
• Parents should be encouraged to give up an extra income, unless it is absolutely essential to support the family.
• Christian education and development is thus crucial to all children, and should be supported by all parents.

I'll admit that the issue of benefits increases for welfare-dependent families which have more children is not simple. Having more children is likely to prolong the period that a family remains welfare-dependent, and nowhere else in society are you guaranteed more income if you have more children. But I am not convinced that the increased welfare benefit plays a significant role in whether or not welfare recipients have more children, and I am not convinced that plunging a poor family even deeper into poverty is the best approach to increased family size. After all, the quality of the children's lives is likely to be directly and materially affected by their family's finances. This idea, along with the idea of forcing teen mothers into group homes, seems most likely to increase business for Planned Parenthood clinics. Christian teachings and abstinence-only education as a cure for teen pregancy? Once again....

Perhaps it is a bit ridiculous to dissect a ten-year-old essay written by a law student. But unfortunately, I suspect that this type of shallow thinking and regurgitation of platitutes helped her get her job, and helped advance her position within the Bush Administration. And I doubt that there's anything in this paper that she would presently repudiate.

"Hands Off My Kid"

The London Guardian presents a mother's examination of how children are treated in the modern world and argues that a desire to protect our offspring from harm has turned into an even greater threat to society as a whole.

An Alternative Hypothesis....

Authors of a study published by the American Heart Association reportedly suggest that weight gain during the first few weeks of life may program an individual for future weight problems.

"Our main finding was that rapid weight gain during the first week of life in this population of healthy, European-American, formula-fed infants was associated with being overweight two to three decades later," said lead author Nicolas Stettler, M.D., M.S.C.E., a pediatric nutrition specialist at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

"It suggests that there may be a critical period in that first week during which the body's physiology may be programmed to develop chronic disease throughout life," Dr. Stettler added.

"Our findings also point toward new potential targets for preventing obesity," he said. "If these results are confirmed by other studies, they may lead to interventions in newborns to help prevent long-term development of obesity."

How's this for an alternative hypothesis: Babies who gain weight more easily grow up to be adults who gain weight more easily. Or is that too obvious?

False Accusations

Although this article comes from England, save perhaps within the confines of prosecution expert testimony in the Michael Jackson trial, we seem to have moved past the day when a child's accusation of abuse was followed by the flat assertion that "kids don't lie about abuse". The article at issue recites,

Children who maliciously claim to have been assaulted or abused by a teacher should be removed from their school and prosecuted, union leaders said last night.

Official figures show that fewer than one in 200 allegations made by children end with teachers being convicted of an offence. But yesterday delegates at the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers conference in Brighton heard how false claims were putting huge pressure on teachers and their families.

It is fair, though, to observe why we don't prosecute kids when their abuse allegations are determined to be unfounded. First, in a "he said, she said" situation, while a claim of abuse may be deemed unprovable it does not inexorably follow that the accusation is false. Second, and far more importantly, strong punishments and prosecutions would put a great deal of power into the hands of the abuser. Third, not without valid reason but with sometimes harmful effect, we have determined that we should all-but-immunize those who report suspected abuse of children, on the basis that it is better to put an innocent adult through an unnecessary (and perhaps maliciously inspired) investigation than to let abuse go undetected.

Within the context of family law, malicious spouses sometimes play the "false allegations" game. The clever ones never make a direct accusation - they collude with others, or manipulate circumstances, such that a report is made while reserving to them an aura of plausible deniability. One case that comes to mind involves a mother who voiced certain suspicions about her husband in a counseling session, which inspired the counselor to make a report to protective services. The counselor was trapped by mandatory reporting laws. The protective services investigation found the allegations to be unsubstantiated. And the mother, in the custody proceedings, was able to deny asking for the investigation and also that she ever made any actual accusations about the father.

I'm not sure that we will ever find a good balance between protecting kids from abuse and protecting the innocent from false accusation. However, where we must choose one or the other, despite the potential for abuse I believe most would still side with protecting kids.

Expert Testimony

I find this type of expert testimony to be, well, interesting.... I paraphrase:

Q. The complainant has given inconsistent accounts.
A. Many complainants who are telling the truth do that.

Q. The complainant repeatedly denied the abuse.
A. Many complainants who are telling the truth do that.

Q. The complainant's time frame for the alleged offenses is impossible.
A. That often happens with young complainants who are telling the truth.

-----------------------

Q. Aren't inconsistent accounts, repeated denials, and an implausible timeframe also consistent with fabrication?
A. I'm not competent to say - I haven't studied false accusations.

I'm not sure what to make of that type of testimony. Does the expert mean to say that not one case of fabrication has been referred to him during his entire 1,000+ evaluations? That he is so overcome by the fact that false denials and confusion can occur in legitimate cases, he refuses to acknowledge basic common sense that they also happen in cases of false accusation? Does he fear that if he acknowledges the obvious that he will do something he finds unacceptable, such as making himself less knowledgeable than a demigod, or putting the prosecution's case at risk?

Take An Interesting Idea...

Take an interesting (albeit dubious) idea, hamstring it, tie it to a counter-productive proposal, and you have a David "Babbling" Brooks editorial.

The notion of having the government set up funds for babies upon birth is interesting, although the only specific proposal Brooks mentions is odd:

Under one version of KidSave, the government would open tax-deferred savings accounts for each American child, making a $1,000 deposit at birth, and $500 deposits in each of the next five years. That money could be invested in a limited number of mutual funds, but it couldn't be withdrawn until retirement.

Why the deposits over five years, instead of a single deposit at birth? Who makes the decision over investment in the "limited number of mutual funds" - and can the child revisit that decision (without penalty) when he or she reaches adulthood? And, if the money cannot be withdrawn until retirement, how is this fundamentally different from Social Security? That is to say, Social Security roughly translates into "money you get when you retire", as does this. Watching a pool of "my money" grow is not much of an object lesson if I didn't earn it, can't invest it in the manner of my choosing, and can't actually spend it... (Or is it that we expect these people to come to some sudden realization about the importance of saving and investment when they retire?) And, if in keeping with Republican "it's your money / ownership society" policies, beyond the restrictions on how the money is invested, retirees are forced to purchase annuities with the funds when they retire, doesn't it become just another form of Social Security or just another iteration of GW's proposed "private accounts" Brooks believes to be a dead letter? These are what Brooks deems to be "the psychological benefits of ownership"? As evidenced by what? The direction in which Brooks' knee jerks? The fact that rich kids never squander their trust funds?

But for Brooks, hamstringing an interesting idea isn't enough. He also proposes,

We could start by indexing Social Security benefits to prices, not wages, so the system wouldn't go broke. Then we could give everybody under a certain age KidSave accounts. This money could either supplement the reduced Social Security benefits, or individuals could divert some of their payroll taxes into their KidSave accounts, trading guaranteed benefits for more ownership.

So we are going to "start" by phasing out Social Security by tying it to price inflation instead of wage inflation? (I don't think anybody with a whit of knowledge about that particular proposal denies that the change Brooks mentions in passing would, over time, be tantamount to elimination of Social Security benefits. Had it been implemented in the 40's, the present maximum Social Security benefit would be what? Something like $5,000 or $6,000?)

How about this? Let me decide how I invest my own money, and stop lying to me about your intention to functionally eliminate Social Security.

And does Brooks really mean this:

And let me commit an act of heresy: it would be smart for Republicans to forgo making the Bush tax cuts permanent in exchange for these kinds of accounts. The Bush cuts are going to be repealed by the next Democratic president anyway, but these accounts, once created, would be forever.

I mean, he believes that the President can implement and eliminate tax cuts, without even bothering to consult the Republican House and Senate? (Or does he anticipate that the blowback from Bush's present policies will be so severe that the Republicans will soon lose their House and Senate majorities along with the White House?)

Rhetorical questions, obviously. He anticipates that the Republicans will do away with their own tax cuts, and blame it on the poor Democrat who is elected to clean up yet another fiscal nightmare created under a fiscally irresponsible Republican president.