"Opinions" are like...

Granted, education is more Alicia's domain than mine, but if you spend as much time with her as I do, you start to feel more qualified to run the Department of Education than the person currently running it! I peruse the news headlines while waking up, and this article got me to wake up pretty fast! The headline did its job in hooking me:

The Depressing Data on Early Childhood Investment

The article is actually an interview with Jerome Kagan, a pioneer in developmental child psychology, according to the introduction. I googled him and found a succinct biography. Kagan believes in "nature" over "nurture"- that genetics are a greater determinant of behavior than upbringing. I would argue that it's "both/and", but since I'm not a parent or clinical psychologist, what do I know?

The interview begins with the premise of trying to shed light on the income inequality gap [side note: watch this video]

The wealth inequality and "achievement gap" are related, according to Kagan. I agree that there is some degree of relationship between income and "achievement" but I would disagree that financial background determines achievement. This country has a long history of people growing up in poverty and becoming extremely successful in business and life. This country also has a history of people who are very wealthy ending up broke in business and life.

The first answer of the interview really pissed me off:

Jerome Kagan: Yes, between the affluent and the bottom third of the population. Many people acknowledge that it has to do with the fact that poor, uneducated parents don't realize the importance of reading to your child, talking to your child, taking your child to the zoo. It's not that they dislike it; they don't realize it's important.

First of all, he is making the assumption that "poor" and "uneducated" are linked. As Alicia pointed out in her last post, they aren't! Second of all, Kagan is basically asserting that poor people don't understand the importance of reading, talking, and going to the zoo. So rich parents totally understand the importance of reading, talking, and going to the zoo? Is that why they buy their kids video games, tablets, and toys? I think Kagan probably hasn't spent a lot of time around people in poverty to understand why they might have a hard time fitting reading to their children between working two or three jobs to feed those children and keep a roof over their head.

I grew up poor and spent most of my summer days riding my bike or walking to the library in the morning, checking out two or three books, reading them all day and then taking them back for more in the afternoon. I read all the Hardy Boys books; I read Dumas and Hugo; I read history books- anything that seemed interesting to me. My parents tried to take time to talk to us every evening. At the very least they would ask us about our day in school and how we were doing with homework. We didn't go to the zoo that much though. I guess my parents didn't realize how important that would be to my development! Damn them for depriving me of spending endless summer days gazing at hippopotamuses (shouldn't it be hippopotami?)! If only mom and dad had allowed me to stare at monkeys in cages! My educational and economic growth are forever stunted because I didn't get enough zoo time in with mom and dad!

I'm guessing what Kagan didn't look at when he made the zoo claim is a map! You don't have to be a world-class sociologist to know there aren't zoos in most impoverished parts of the country. There are about 350 zoos in America. That's approximately 1 zoo for every 896,897 Americans. The average ticket price for zoos is purported to be: between $10-20 for adults and $5-15 for children. So, for a family of four, a trip to the zoo could cost anywhere between $30 and $70. Not including transportation costs, parking, concessions (because who leaves the zoo without a pennant?!), and food (because watching lions eat makes me hungry!). On a monthly budget of $1859 (poverty line for 4 people is $22,314), making a choice between paying rent and utilities or taking the kids to the zoo seems to be a no-brainer!

If I had a chance to speak with Kagan, I would want to tell him that "poor, uneducated" people realize the importance of reading and talking to their children, but working multiple jobs in order to provide for their children takes away from their ability to read and talk with them.

Most of the interview questions focus on the topic of genetics and intelligence and their relationship to wealth. According to Kagan:

Jerome Kagan: Well, no one has found a gene for IQ.

Give them time, Jerome! Genetic predisposition doesn't necessarily guarantee success, and he does acknowledge that:

Genes do make a contribution to the IQ score -- but a flower needs soil. The environment for poor people is so overwhelmingly powerful, it washes out the genetic effect. There is a genetic contribution to IQ, but you can't detect it when you're living in a deprived environment.

WOW! "You can't detect it [IQ] when you're living in a deprived environment." What an elitist idea! Is he honestly positing that poor people are so overwhelmed by poverty they can't detect their intelligence?! I guess I didn't grow up poor after all then- because I've always known my capacity for intelligence and possess a love for education and learning. Maybe my genetics were stronger than my economic situation? Or maybe my poor parents understood that education was a way to advance beyond the cycle of poverty?

Perhaps the most positive statement Kagan made in the whole interview was:

We know that poor people are not genetically defective.

Thank God! If poor people were genetically defective they wouldn't be able to mow the rich man's lawn or collect trash. What kind of world would we live in then?

Maybe we should conduct an experiment in the "nature" vs. "nurture" arena and in the "rich schools" vs. "poor schools" arena. We take poor kids and bus them to rich schools and bus rich kids to poor schools. That should help us figure out if teachers are to blame- the current assumptions are that teachers in poor schools aren't as good as teachers in rich schools (and we have the standardized test scores to prove it). If the "bad" teachers in poor schools can't successfully educate the genetically superior rich kids, we know the teachers are at fault, because clearly genetics is the key to intelligence and wealth. To further the experiment, we trade kids from a poor family and a wealthy family- at birth of course- so we can examine whether the genetics are altered by the environment or whether they stay the same. A final phase in the experiment could be swapping neighborhoods and economic situations- the rich live in the impoverished part of town on a poverty level budget; while the poor move to the rich section of town and live on that income level. The kids go to school in the respective zone and we see who ends up "achieving" more.

Or, we could stop making wealth the "standard" by which everyone is measured. We could also quit making "standardized" tests that are only "standard" to the middle class urban and suburbanites. I bet if we gave the poor bilingual immigrant children Alicia teaches a fighting chance they'd be better off in the developing global economy than the rich monolingual children across town. Who's more intelligent: the five year old who speaks English and Spanish but has a hard time differentiating "before" from "in front of" [I've seen the assessments Alicia has to do]; or the five year old who only speaks English, knows all of their colors, shapes, and letters, and knows the difference between "on top of" and "above"? Could it be that both are intelligent and both offer different but valuable contributions to society?! I guess it depends on their socio-economic status and their test scores.