Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Briarcliff, Croton, and Ossining

And How Are the Children?

Given by James Covington on March 7th, 2004

I recently read about an event that took place in another section of the country, but nevertheless represents a familiar attitude. The story goes that a high school student driving to school, was late for class and impatient, passed a stopped car on the right and hit a child who was crossing the street, using the school crosswalk. The child was flipped onto the hood and into the windshield before falling to the ground. Luckily, he received only bruises and abrasions.

But that’s not all of the story. Red lights were flashing on the ambulance, while emergency workers cared for the child; red lights were flashing on a fire truck; red lights were flashing on the bus—but all these warnings didn’t stop the driver of another car from continuing on her way, trying to squeeze between the fire truck and the bus. Failing there, she backed up and almost hit someone else in the crosswalk.

And still the story goes on. The very next day at the same time and the same place, the very same school bus was loading children once again. A couple of motorists stopped behind the bus became impatient. A man got out of his BMW and made angry motions for everyone to hurry. He finally got back into his car. As the school bus was pulling away, he pulled into the lane of oncoming traffic to pass the bus on the left. A number of parents moved into his path, to make sure he waited. Then a woman got out of her SUV and began to yell. The parents made it clear that drivers needed to wait, that children’s safety was at stake here.

The bus pulled on out, and traffic began to flow again, the parents getting dirty looks from some of the drivers. As the woman in the SUV passed, she yelled at the parents. Several of the parents approached her vehicle, and one told her that drivers needed to be patient, that a child was hit here the day before.

“I know, I saw it happen,” she screamed. “Keep your kids out of the road!” And then she sped away.

This is a startling story—but all too believable. It is almost a metaphor for our time: keep your kids out of the road, keep your kids out of the way. We have places to go, things to do, appointments to keep—get the kids out of our way.

The way I see it, children are being dismissed by all of our major institutions—the institutions that in a healthier society would be expected to treasure our children, to nurture them, to prepare them to take leadership roles in the future. These institutions are the government, business, education, and the family.

Let’s begin by taking a look at government policy. We say we can’t find the money for pre-school programs, for nutrition, for health care. If we continue to cut taxes, it is hard to see how there will be any money at all for such social programs. In other words, starve the budget and social programs will be the first to go. But, my contention is that we can always find the money for things we value. A Stealth bomber is a pricey item, at $530 million per plane. We will pay for capital punishment, which costs us $1.7 million per case, and we can pay $166 billion dollars to bail out failed savings and loan companies. It’s not that we don’t have the money—it’s where we choose to spend the money.

Children from all classes and races are suffering these days. It’s not just a question of what is happening to poor children. And yet, these poor children—about 19 % of all children—are taking the brunt of the pain.

Well, what about the highly vaunted welfare reform? We see in the newspaper the single mom now busily working at a satisfying job. But how are these families really doing?

We do know that most jobs available to welfare recipients will not pay them enough to lift them out of poverty. Think about it. How much does it cost to live these days? Assume that a woman living here in Westchester with a single child can get a job paying $7.00 an hour. Now keep in mind that minimum wage for the U.S. is $5.15—so $7.00 is good money. If she can find a cheap apartment and if she can keep an old junker of a car running, her basic expenses–and I mean basic (that is, no movies, no eating out, no gifts, no frills of any kind) would be, by my reckoning, $1,570 per month. Her take-home pay is about $950 a month. She needs, then, $620 more dollars just to scrape by. The solution? Clearly, take a second job. And then what happens to the child? The mother is either absent or, when she is home, exhausted.

What is the face of poverty for children? Poverty is going to school hungry in the morning and not being able to concentrate on your lessons. Poverty is your family having to move again and again because Daddy can’t pay the rent. Poverty is wearing clothes that don’t fit and having hair that goes uncut. Poverty is feeling ashamed, because somehow you think you are at fault for being poor.

When some suffer, we all suffer. We do know that it is inevitable that the problems of child poverty will become the problems of the juvenile court system. Poor children are more likely to suffer from emotional and behavioral problems. They struggle in school and are twice as likely as other kids to drop out of school, to repeat a grade, or to be expelled. We are busy transferring public money from poverty programs to the prison system. But most people don’t know that the cost of building a new prison is well over $60,000 per inmate.

Government policies regarding women and children are much more enlightened in Europe than those in the United States. In most European countries the government helps pay for child care, requires private employers to provide generous leaves for childbirth, and encourages flexible work schedules. French families receive a monthly allowance to help them rear each child, and children go to school for free starting at age two and a half. In Sweden, both men and women are allowed one year of leave at 90 per cent of their earnings after they have a child.

Only a small number of American companies have family friendly policies, but companies are beginning to see that if they want to stop the high turnover rate of their women employees, they need to become more sensitive to the needs of families.

I want to shift now to education. How are we doing there? SAT scores have shown modest improvement recently, but from 1965 to 1990, they fell 70 points. In a study of 5,000 students in Dallas, Texas, 25% of them could not name the country that borders the U.S. on the south. In Boston 38% could not name 6 New England States. Only about 70% of our high school students earn a diploma, when our economic competitors have near-universal secondary education. In Japan, for example, 90-95 % of 17-year-olds graduate from high school. And their schools are much more rigorous. Our graduates are required to have more knowledge and skills than ever before, but their capabilities are actually decreasing.

In addition, I received this week a very evocative email from our own Tom Lalicki that addresses our educational system in the country particularly in our prison system. Tom had recently heard Henry Louis Gates, the distinguished historian, point out that 2.5 million African Americans are in prison, jail or on parole in 2003. According to recent studies, most prisons fail miserably in their rehab programs. According to the New York Times article, “The state now spends $80,0000 a year on each imprisoned young offender and yet recidivism approaches 90 percent.” Tom boldly calls for the congregation to find a way to support real educational reform at the fellowship and denominational level, just the way UUs worked for abolition in the 1850s, and voting rights in the 1960s. Quite correctly, Tom asks, “If children are our most important asset, shouldn’t most of our spending be on developing their potential, not on imprisoning them?”

In a powerful book just released, The Working Poor: Invisible in America, the author David Shipler, forcefully addresses the issue of poverty. In the book he describes how one school, the Maya Angelou Charter School in Washington is providing real education by bringing 100 students in for breakfast and keeps them until after dinner. They have small classes, homework sessions with 75 volunteers and counseling from three full-time social workers. The cost is $25,000 yearly per student. Sounds like a lot. But compare that figure to $80,000 per year to keep a teen in prison. Or $60,000 per inmate to build a new prison.

What about the family? As fundamentalist Christians have pointed out– and they are right–there has been a massive breakdown in the family. The demise of the extended family. The divorce statistics. You know the scene as well as I do. But the answer to the fragmentation of the family is not keeping women at home. With almost 50% of the workforce being women, the one paycheck family is rare these days. But if both parents are in the workplace, and the hours in the workplace keep getting longer, who cares for the children? The data show that the amount of real time that parents spend with children has dropped 40% in the last 25 years. It really does take a village to raise a child. How can we create these villages of support?

Some adults seem almost afraid of their children at times, afraid to exert any control over a child’s behavior. A couple of years ago, another incident was reported in the news about teen boxing taking place in one of our nation’s cities. Apparently teens had been meeting in a secluded park to hold unsupervised boxing matches. At the time, a hundred and seventy-five people were gathering to watch. Police and school officials said there was little they could do to stop the fighting, because “boxing is legal,” according to city lawyers. However, these teens were not boxing, they were brawling. On one occasion, two girls slammed their fists rapid-fire into the faces of their opponents. Excited spectators formed a ring four or five people deep to cheer and taunt. In another fight a sophomore was struck twice in the head. The young man said that he had never fought before and that he could not remember the final blows in the fight. Some older boxers who came to offer help suggested that the child could have suffered a minor concussion. It was only then that the police stopped the fight.

Now, who is responsible for this situation? None of the adults who could be expected to protect children actually did so. Not the schools, not the police, not the onlookers. And where were these kids’ parents?

We are leaving the children of this country to the rule of popular culture, and many children take their values from video games, TV, and movies, all of which have become increasingly violent. We can understand why some teens think smashing each other in the face is entertainment. The TV has become the baby-sitter most often used for children. Three to five-year-olds watch 3 ½ hours daily. By age 12 kids have seen 8,000 murders and 100,000 acts of violence.

One of the striking findings of a recent report by the Commission on Children at Risk, is that the longer children of immigrants live in the U.S., the more they “tend to be less healthy and to report increases in risk behaviors. The inevitable conclusion: our culture is harmful to children’s mental and emotional health; we must make radical changes or our children will continue to suffer. The good news is that this alarming trend can be reversed, but only if we activate ourselves to create a new, vibrant environment that will allow our children to flourish through deep connections with nurturing people and ennobling sources of education and meaning.

What do kids need in their lives? According to Richard Weissbourd in his book The Vulnerable Child, children need four things: to feel safe, to accomplish work they are proud of, to feel that the world is just, and to have hope. They get these things from positive contact with adults. When I read this, I started thinking about my own upbringing. My parents both worked. They often had fights. My father was an alcoholic. But I had everything that Weissbourd mentions. I had a large extended family of aunts and uncles that I saw frequently and who acted as positive role models for me. In my small town where everybody knew everybody else, if I made a misstep, my grandmother would know about it before I arrived home. Everybody watched everybody else’s children. It was truly a community—everybody was tied to all the others and somehow responsible to them.

I’m not saying that I want to go back to that little town in West Tennessee—but I am saying that our children need a sense of belonging, a deep knowing that they are children and adults are adults. I don’t think American parents are bad people, selfish and narcissistic. I don’t think most people get divorces on a whim. I think we live in a social and economic system that drains the life out of us and promotes values that are deadening to the spirit: greed, competitiveness, overwork, alienation from others. We are lonely and soul sick. I think we have trouble parenting because we have no context of community in which to do so.

I hope that this church is a life-giving place for those who are involved here. In our religious education program, we treat our children with care and respect. But one aspect of educational program should always include a social justice program. I have a vision of one day establishing a family life program here that will offer support and educational input to all families and children.

Let me share with you something from the Masai tradition. The Masai are among the most accomplished tribes of Africa, their people deeply intelligent, their warriors fearsome. It is telling that the traditional greeting passed between Masai warriors is “kasserian ingera,” which means “and how are the children?” This greeting acknowledges the high value that the Masai always place on their children’s well-being. Even warriors with no children of their own always give the traditional answer: “All the children are well,” meaning of course that peace and safety prevail. The young and powerless are being protected. Masai society has not forgotten its reason for being.

I wonder how it might affect our consciousness if in our culture we took to greeting each other with this same question: “And how are the children?” I wonder if we heard that question and passed it along a dozen times a day, if perhaps we would begin to change in how we care for our children. What would it be like if President Bush began every press conference by answering the question, “And how are the children, Mr. President?” What if every governor, every legislator of every state, had to answer the same question with every public appearance? “How are the children?” What would happen if every adult, parent and non-parent alike, felt responsible for our children. I wonder if then we could truly say, without any hesitation, “The children are well, yes, all the children are well.”

How to begin? We have to think big, to question, to meet with others and talk openly about the pain of our living, to imagine, to risk change. No political ideology can give us the answer, there is no book of rules anywhere. We have to create it ourselves. We have to acknowledge that the way we live now leads to death of the spirit—for all of us. What would be a way that gives life, both for ourselves and for our precious children? No more silent marching in the ruts, no more turning away from what our heart is saying to us. No more despair. We can’t afford that luxury. Let us dare to imagine a new way. Let us have the courage to hope and to dream of what could be. Perhaps one day we will be able to say, “The children are well, all the children are well.”

So be it. Amen.