What You Do to the Least of These

In the words of Nelson Mandela, “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”

In Proverbs 22:6 it is written, “Start children off in the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.” This is not just a religious scripture; it’s a scientific fact. There’s no greater human potential that that provided by the brain capacity and neuroplasticity of children under the age of eight. We now know in ways that weren’t scientifically established a century ago that a child’s brain is infinitely more flexible, more emotionally intelligent, and more capable of learning and retaining information than an adult’s.

The iconic filmmaker Billie Wilder once said, “If you have a problem in the third act, the realm problem is in the first act.” The most sophisticated kind of long-term planning focuses on getting things right at the beginning.

This country is standing on top of millions of tiny gold mines. Enter any kindergarten and you’ll see an unlimited amount of unmined energy, creativity and genius. Every American elementary school student has potential talent and intelligence unmatched by any technological, financial, or institutional power. Nothing humanity has created can begin to rival the potential of the human brain, and no human brain carries more potential than the brain of the child. The greatest energy by which to power a sustainable future comes not from technological sources but from the genius in our elementary schools.

The beginning of any system is all-important and that is what childhood is - not only for an individual but for a society. Once a beginning is set, things are far more difficult to change afterwards. In its low rankings on prenatal care, maternal health, and the psychological and emotional care of new parents, the US government fails not only mothers and children but also the country at large.

The fact that we still don’t have federally guaranteed maternity and paternity leave is both pathetic and outrageous. It’s been proven over and over again (and clearly understood by the vast majority of advanced democracies in the world) that the money it costs to provide maternity and paternity leave is a fraction of what the society pays later on in the form of societal dysfunction among those who did not get their needs meet in the very earliest stages of life. That, plus the depression experienced by women who have to leave their children to go back to work when millions of years of evolution have programmed them to keep the baby in their arms for longer, is a form of societal violence perpetrated upon both mother and child. This is one of but many areas where we continue to value the dictates of short-term profit maximization before the long-term wellness of our citizens and our society.

The idea of helping people has been propagandistically turned into some twisted vision of a nanny state - like it’s some enabling, codependent, fuzzy-minded thinking as opposed to what it really is: action that aligns us with our spiritual nature, the laws of the universe, and the ultimate well-being of all.

Over thirteen million children in America are considered food insecure. 2.5 million children are homeless every year. All over America we have elementary students on suicide watch. We have millions of children who live in “domestic war zones,” where they’re clinically diagnosed as experiencing PTSD - one quarter of all the girls in Chicago public schools have been deemed as such - as bad if not worse than veterans who returned from war zones in the Middle East. And these children, remember, are not experiencing not post trauma but rather present trauma - triggered and re-triggered every single day.

Kira.

A kindergartener in a disadvantaged neighborhood has the same inner fire and potential creativity as a kindergartener in a rich one; every school in America should be a palace of learning, culture, and the arts. The fact that the majority of our school funding is provided by way of property taxes is a passive form of oppression; no child in America should be denied a world-class education because his or her parents are poor. Such disparity perpetuates our slide toward a veiled aristocratic system. Access to the finest education remaining in the hands of a few is the way an unjust system ensures that power remains in the hands of a few.

We have millions of American children who go to schools where there aren’t adequate resources to teach a child to read, and a child who cannot learn to read by the age of 8 has a radically reduced change of graduating from high school and a radically increased chance of later incarceration. Meanwhile, there is one mental health counsellor for every 1,600 children in America’s public schools.

Why doesn’t American public policy display greater concern for the state of our children? First of all, they’re not old enough to vote; and because they’re not old enough to work, they have no financial leverage. Given the undue influence of money on our politics, our government has become now little more than a system of legalized bribery; so what possible chance do these children have to compete with the billions of dollars in corporate donations that fuel it?

Millions of American children, born innocent children of God with unlimited human potential, fall through the cracks of our society every year. And in many ways, we’ve simply normalizing their despair, even sliding backwards. While child labor laws were first introduced in the United States early in the 20th Century, Wisconsin just passed a law allowing 14 and 15 year olds to work until 11pm. We’re not helping our children so much as providing them with measures to help them survive their despair. A child growing up in poverty? Great idea: let them work longer hours!

The overwhelming problems faced by America’s children today - and we’ve only scratched the surface here - will simply grow larger until faced squarely in the eye. Everything from trauma-informed education to community wrap around services to anti-poverty measures to common sense gun control to the eradication of hunger in America to an an executive level Department of Children and Youth to universal health care to so much more is needed. Such things are bare minimums required to meet the needs of millions of our children whose suffering is basically invisible.

When I ran for president, I met amazing people all over the country who work tirelessly to help our children. Educators, social workers, professionals of all kind would report amazing work they do to help children transcend horrifying circumstances. In fact, I heard very inspiring stories. But time and again, all over the country, I would ask, “Of the children in this community who need the kind of help you provide, about how many do you feel you’re able to reach?” And I would get the same answer every time, no matter where I was. It was always this: “Ten per cent.”

So this is where we are, and where it’s reasonable to assume we will stay in the absence of a serious disruption of our current political situation. Our politicians know that children don’t vote and that many of the poor don’t vote. For far too many of them, that’s pretty much the end of the story.

President Mandela was right: the state of a country’s soul is revealed by the way it treats its children.

God help us.