Children – Parent’s or Society’s Responsibility

There are numerous areas that differentiate Republicans from Democrats. One of them is the point of view on individual’s rights versus society’s needs. An area of particular interest to me in this debate is the role and responsibility of parents and society as a whole in raising and educating our children. Five years ago I posted a piece I wrote on education and the following is a quote from that piece. (Pretty arrogant quoting myself, huh?) “Years ago a neighbor made a comment to the affect that since our kids are grown, why should we have to pay to educate children of others. I would like to think that the question does not reflect a common point of view but following are my thoughts on the topic. The question is aimed at public education and may boil down to why should the general population pay for something that is of benefit to an individual or a family and is of no consequence to the community? Jonas Salk, the inventor of the vaccine that eliminated polio was not a relative of the masses that were spared the pain of the dreaded disease. Charles Manson was not the son of the Tate’s whose daughter Sharon he and the gang he led murdered so brutally in the 60s. The society as a whole benefits or suffers from the actions of other people’s children and thus it is to the benefit of everyone that we produce the “best”. In the industrialized world where we do not rely on our children to care for us in old age, the major benefit derived by the family of a well-educated child comes down to “bragging rights”.” A golfing buddy the other day complained about the government (and by extension him) having to pay for defaulted student loans. Just like the neighbor above, he felt he was being asked to pay for “stuff” given to an individual but of no benefit to him. Children have been thought of as belonging to the parents and at the extreme, in medieval Japan, the head of a household had a right to put any member, including a child, to death without repercussions. They were his and he had the right to do with them as he saw fit. We have come a long way since then but the notion that children are truly the responsibility of the society as a whole (“children are our future”, “It takes a village”, and all that), still has limited acceptance. Poor parent’s kids attend poor schools while the children of the rich attend good schools and a parent or the child has to pay for their college education. This goes to demonstrate the lack of our ability to connect the quality of an upbringing with the wellbeing of society and for that matter, individuals within that society. A scholarship granted to a poor but brilliant child for the most part is viewed as a gift or a reward and not an important investment in our future. I was watching an old TED Talk by Yuval Noah Harari entitled “Why Humans Run the World”. His basic theme is that we humans as individuals have no advantage over most other animals. For example: if a man and a chimp were stranded on an island, the chimp would most likely survive and the man not. The advantage we have, even over other social animals like bees and chimpanzees, is that unlike bees and chimps, who function in colonies of limited numbers, we function as a society of unlimited numbers. They live in the current reality. We are able to operate in very large social groups because we create imagined realities through stories we collectively believe. As an example he mentions that a chimp might trade another chimp a banana for a mango but never as we, trading a banana today for the promise of many bananas in some imagined afterlife. Another example is the story that money has a value. We believe a worthless piece of paper with certain printing has sufficient value to be exchanged for a banana or a different printing for thousands of bananas. So if Harari’s thesis has any merit and we humans, as social animals run the world, then the children today will be adults running this world tomorrow and thus maybe a societal responsibility. If children are indeed a society’s asset and responsibility, what then is the role of the parents? Whether by Devine intervention or more likely evolution, we are built with a need to procreate and sustain or increase the population of our village, tribe, nation or the planet. Several decades ago, China tried to slow its population growth with the “one child” policy but since has came to realize that to grow their economy, not only did they need to replace the deceased, they needed to grow the population. Much of northern Europe has declining populations and Denmark, concerned about this drop, even has adds running on TV encouraging the general population to have more babies. A declining population is a threat to the wellbeing of individuals since there will not be enough people to provide necessary resources for the aging. Obviously one key role of parents is to bring into this world the children necessary to maintain or increase the population. Humans, because of their large heads housing their large brains, come into the world prematurely, before the physiology of the brain has been fully developed. Successful development needs to occur in a quiet, stress-less environment. Fortunately we humans are born, as I believe are most animals, with a tender affection for the very young, particularly though not exclusively, if they are of our seed or egg. So the job of nurturing the infant naturally falls to the parent and the role of society should be to enable the setting where parents can properly support the physiological development of the brain. After this physiological development children need to develop psychologically. This development requires much one on one attention and patience. Though this part could theoretically be provided by others, the natural affection of the parent for the child makes the job much more effectively if they do it. As the child grows the role of the parent diminishes and society’s role expands. It is in preparing children to be contributing members of a society where the crossover begins. Education systems were designed to teach children skills necessary to become productive members of their societies. England developed public education because of their vast and dispersed empire needed a cadre of clerks with good hand writing and the ability to add a column of numbers. Each country and community wants children to learn what is necessary for the future well-being of that community. The Soviet Union wanted good communists and the West, good capitalists. Each curriculum was appropriate to their ends. Malcom Gladwell in one of his books, wrote about professional hockey and gave some interesting statistics. If one looks at the birthdates of professional Canadian hockey players one finds that most are born in January, followed by February and a few in March. I don’t believe there are any born in November or December. The reason for this is that in the Canadian junior hockey system, very small children are grouped by birth year at a very early age. So kids born in 2010, whether in January or December are put into one group. At the age of five or six that one year makes a tremendous difference in their physical development. So the kids born in January, having a year more to develop, outperform the kids born in December. Each team chooses the best players who are then put into elite teams which get six times the ice times as the regular teams. So, having been culled at a very early age and with six times more practice and playing time, they have a tremendous advantage over other hokey players. This system, by its nature, does not produce the best possible players in a community. Statistically there are as many good players born at the end of the year. But not given the ice time, they are essentially deprived the opportunity to play professional hockey. In fact, the best player may very well have been born in December. We will never find out. For the benefit of all of society, we need the best talent in our government and to run our businesses and other institutions. Our current system culls our children much as does Canada its hokey players, though the culling is not by age but by wealth. We proclaim that all in our country have an equal chance to succeed (the even playing field). However, the truth is that though the chance exists, it is far from equal and whereas in one case one may have a high probability, in the case of the very poor, the probability against success becomes astronomical. Many look at it as unfairness to the individuals. I look at it as a shortcoming that has a negative impact on all of us and is a detriment to society worldwide. As would a Canadian hockey fan want to see the best of Canada play on the national stage and not only the best of those born in January and February, so do I want t the best of us running our institutions and not only those born to wealthy parents. So a child’s proper development is in everyone’s best interest. Education should be provided to every child and higher education to every child with the ability to benefit from it. But attention to formal education is not enough, from birth, children are being already culled. To ensure that we have the best talent in all positions we must not only provide high quality education to all independent of wealth but also enact policies allowing all parents to provide an environment for the children in their care to develop both physiologically and psychologically.

Innovation and American Exceptionalism

Watching the special on technology on CNN’s GPS with Fareed Zakaria today, where among other things they discussed nuclear fusion (a pet topic of mine, considering it the energy source of the not too distant future), made me think of an important role of government that the Right has been neglecting. The push for reduction in spending and the naïve notion that private enterprise is the answer to everything has put us into a position where within a few years China will be spending more per GDP on research than will the US. Republicans will see no issue with government spending less, the problem is that private enterprise is also spending less. Large corporations like the IBMs and GEs along with their likes in the defense industry that had large research facilities have scaled them back over the last few decades. The current focus on quarterly performance has lead them to reduce spending on research which after all is a very long term investment and for the most part CEOs are not paid to think of the “long term”. Republicans thump their chests about our “exceptionalism” but generally don’t have any ideas as to where we are and where we are not truly exceptional. A number of years ago I saw “Morning Joe”, a political talk show hosted by Joe Scarborough, a former member of congress from Florida and a Republican, where they were discussing the military. A guest on the show mentioned that the military is having to drop its standards to be able to recruit sufficient numbers of soldiers. Joe chimed in that we have the best and brightest in our military and when the guest asked by what standard, Joe went into a chant of USA, USA, USA ending the conversation. In many areas like healthcare (we are 47th in life expectancy), freedom (the Kato Institute, a Libertarian think tank, puts us somewhere in the mid-teens among industrialized nations), and quality of life (The Economist has us at 13th) that the right brags about, we are not “exceptional”. There are other areas where we are leaders, though we might not want to be, are the number of gun deaths and the number of people we have in jails. We are first in the industrialized world. An area where we are truly world leaders is innovation and R&D and our efficient venture capital system facilitates it. Another area where we are leaders also indirectly contributes to our innovation. It is our ability to integrate various cultures into our society (though we have not done a good job of integrating Africans we brought over as slaves). This ability allows us to attract talent from around the globe. It is their creativity and the fact that these immigrants come with a variety of experiences, allowing problems to be viewed from many perspectives, that enhances the ability to innovate. Unfortunately most on the Right do not recognize our true “exceptionalism”. During this election cycle the Republican candidates spout anti-immigrant slogans which I’m sure discourage talent from abroad from coming here and enhancing our ability to innovate. The push for austerity, smaller government and elimination of debt, has resulted in a reduction in spending on research and education which surely will not only reduce our ability to innovate but also our ability to compete globally.