Coordinator for Educational Programs
“Willingness to protect children is a moral litmus test of
any decent and compassionate nation and city and state.” Marian Wright Edelman,
1988
A
quarter century ago, Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense
Fund, gave a speech about the state of children in the United States as part of the La Guardia
Lecture Series. Edelman’s speech was a powerful indictment of our society’s
and government’s failure to protect the health and well being of children. Edelman’s emphasis on the high rates of child
poverty, the lack of health insurance for 35 million Americans, the need for
prenatal care and for more and better early childhood education were as real
then as they are today. She denounced President Reagan’s notion that
government is the problem, believing that government played a critical role in
addressing society’s ills. Budget
deficits were also high in the 1980s, but Edelman argued that they were not
caused by programs for children or the poor.
She turned instead to the ballooning military budget as the main cause
for the deficit and demanded action to address the needs of children, 20% of
whom lived in poverty.
In
President Obama’s State of the Union he addressed many of these concerns,
defending the role of government in supporting people’s needs. Most notably, he called for universal pre-K
education. But this is an old
story. Edelman saw the need for such an
initiative 25 years ago and Congress passed legislation 42 years ago, only to
see it vetoed by President Richard Nixon.
(See Gail Collins’ NY Times column “The State of the 4-Year-Olds.”) The Affordable
Care Act will address many of children’s health concerns, but will Congress take
up this call for universal pre-K education? If not now, when?
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