Politicians
all over the world are plagued with the issue of children, their health and
education, and have to respond to questions about what is best for our children
because those children are our future. The
health and well-being of children has become a family, community, state,
national, and global problem proving that people of the world recognize the
importance of children but do not always have the resources to find answers to
solve problems. By increasing the
availability of life saving vaccines to children to 90 percent in disadvantaged
countries could possibly save 6.4 million children between 2011 – 2020 (Ozawa, et al., 2011). The healthier the child is the better learner
they can be (Morrison, 2007).
The more children who grow up to be a happy and healthy adult will
create a stronger future because of those healthy, educated adults.
Our children are the only assurance
of a future and yet there is more generosity and willingness to send aid for a population
affected by a natural disaster than to help take care of the children of the
world and give those children a chance at life.
Twice as many children die every year from preventable causes than
people with HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined (Stoltenburg, 2006).
Many people agree that children are more important than most anything
however excuses flow freely for why support and donations are not given to the
children of the world however money is sent in droves to help the families
affected by a hurricane, or tornados, or earthquakes. The United Nations came
together in 2001 and agreed on the importance of the children of the world by
developing eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGS) to help every country strive
to have healthy, educated children within their countries (Stoltenburg, 2006).
MDG-4 focused on neo-natal health and child mortality and it was agreed
to reduce child-mortality by two-thirds by 2015 however despite the available
resources and solutions to the problems, enough progress has not been made to
achieve this goal (Stoltenburg, 2006).
Children’s health is a political issue for politicians and society as a
whole. While politicians and the media
focus on the health problems of the world’s youth, many causes for those
problems are essentially entwined with societal values, social norms and myths (Emerson, 2010). As the problem was realized, addressed, and
solutions offered, possible answers continue to be ignored and pushed away
because it is too difficult to manage and facilitate. Excuses are created to explain why the recommendations
are not being followed through, however it only hurts the children and the
trend continues on, and to help solve some of these issues and create a child
better ready to learning and be productive in school, there can be no excuse
good enough to not follow research recommendations and support the young minds
of today.
Understanding the world is just as
vital as a child’s health. If children
do not understand their place, their impact, or their involvement on the world
around them, the future world may not exist as it does today. Children not only need to be healthy, ready
to learn in school, and successful in their educations, but also an integral
part of the political and decision making processes involved in a country. There is an international consensus for the
need to increase citizenship education in schools and make the subject more
participatory, collaborative, and issue based; however there has been little
action on changing the current standards (Howe & Covell, 2009). Some writers have expressed the importance of
citizenship education and the need to emphasize the subject within schools
across the world and signify the legacy to be able to move forward (Howe & Covell, 2009). Children need to be taught about the greater
good and what citizenship means because if the pursuit of individual wants and
needs over comes the greater good, democratic society will deteriorate and fall
apart creating a void within people being filled with more anxiety and in turn
creating more health problems for adults (Howe & Covell, 2009). Although new initiatives have been introduced
they have not yet yielded any progress in creating a greater sense of
citizenship within the youth of the United States (Howe & Covell, 2009).
Education
administrators at the school district level and higher are always concerned
about curriculum and how and what children are learning within the schools
along with how to access proof of children’s learning through assessment. The United States board of education had
finally gotten together and expressed the absolute need to have standards that
are the same across the board, and state. Over the next few years all states
will be adjusting their standards for k-12 language arts and math, and moving
to the National Common Core standards, ensuring every school district in every
county, in every state, across the United States are working for the same goals
for each grade level. The No Child Left
Behind Act of 2001 was intended to help improve and reform elementary through
high school education (Morrison, 2007).
The act has changed teaching for many years to come and has also
affected pre-K education because of the large importance being put on getting
children ready to learn and ready to be in school (Morrison, 2007).
While there is an understanding within political and educator circles that
every child needs to be given every chance to succeed to their highest
potential and be given every opportunity to become a meaningful part of
society, how to reach that goal causes friction. Not every child can be taught in the same
manner or with the same tools; not every child comes to school equipped with
the skills to learn, and not every child has a stable home life that satisfies
their basic needs; all of these factors
affect how a child learns and absorbs information.
With the increase in the
necessity of helping children become ready to learn before they begin school,
the United States federal government has created programs, such as, Head Start
and Early Head Start, to help disadvantaged children become more prepared to
learn and succeed in school. While the
idea of the head start program offers solutions to help at-risk children become
ready to learn as they begin school, not every program is effective at helping
children become less at-risk. Head start
primarily aims for children from low income, single parent, disadvantaged homes,
on the other hand there is unfortunately still a group of children who are not
disadvantaged enough to openly qualify for services though still need the
chance at extra support or opportunities given by the Head Start program. Not all families are poor enough or struggle
enough to be obviously pinpointed as needing help, and yet these groups of
lower middle class families still lack the resources to pay for a preschool
program to assist their child in getting the helping hand offered by a
preschool program and many of those children can fall through the cracks and
end up further behind than they would have been with the support form a
preschool.
As much as early childhood education
has become a priority for the education system, some effort has been made to
support children even earlier than that.
Early head start is a program to help pregnant women stay healthy and
provide healthy family functioning (Morrison, 2007).
While these programs look like the problem solver on paper there are
always children who are not reached that should be and need to be. A Head Start program that feeds in the
elementary school I have been teaching kindergarten in for five years has not
yielded many results in helping these children enter school ready to learn or
even understand their role in the school itself and the classroom. Many administrators, politicians, and policy
makers make decisions by thinking to throw a little extra money at helping the
at-risk children catch up and that will fix all the problems, except to gain
that extra money funding gets cut in other areas, such as class size, or
support help, or basic supply money, affecting more children’s learning and
possibly causing more children to fall behind.
Class size has been studied and has shown to affect children’s learning;
it’s not just the teacher but the environment those children are being exposed
to. A classroom with 15-20 students can
function much better than a classroom with 25-30 students. With a classroom of 15-20 students the
teacher is not stalled by as many children trying to gain attention and while
working with small groups of children.
With a smaller class size the teacher can spend more quality time with
each child and not feel the pressures to move on because the next student needs
help also; while at the same time making sure every child is on task and
handling any children who are not.
As a school teacher for almost
twelve years, I have experienced decisions made by administrators and
politicians with regards to the choices being made for children, however from
the classroom point of view many of the positive choices, changes or
suggestions are lost before actually entering the classroom. Outcomes for children, their education and
futures are lost on business decisions and the bottom line; money. Education is not a business, in the respect
that there are good and services.
Children cannot be treated like a box of cereal on the shelf, or a can
of beans or corn, just waiting for someone to come and buy, human emotions and
life situations play too much of a factor in the product being put out by the
education system therefore the decisions being made about children cannot
forget the human factor. If children are
not a foremost priority for any country, the country will have little hope for
a future. No one lives forever, so
naturally children are the future for everything, and without them there will
be no one to continue on and to pass on the heirloom of experience from a
countries’ history. Investing in
children ensures the legacy for future politicians (Stoltenburg, 2006).
Knowing that children are the most important form of insurance for a
future, children should be held with the utmost importance and respect above
all else. “Protecting our children is a
moral and political imperative (Stoltenburg, 2006).”
References
Emerson, L.
(2010). The good life for children: Do we really care about the trends? Australian
Journal of Social Issues, 101-115.
Howe, R. B.,
& Covell, K. (2009). Engaging children in citizenship education: A children's
rights perspective. The Journal of Educational Thought, 21-44.
Morrison, G. S.
(2007). Early childhood education today. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey:
Pearson Merrill Prentice Hall.
Ozawa, S.,
Stack, M. L., Bishai, D. M., Mirelman, A., Friberg, I. K., Niessen, L., et al.
(2011). During the 'decade of vaccines,' the lives of 6.4 million children
valued at $231 billion counld be saved. Health Affairs, 1010 - 1020.
Stoltenburg,
J. (2006, September 18). Our children: The key to our common future.
Retrieved December 3, 2011, from The Lancet: www.thelancet.com
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