Vernard T. Gant, D.Min., is the director of Urban School Services for ACSI. Previously, he served with the Children’s Scholarship Fund of Birmingham, Alabama. After studying the problem for years, Dr. Gant believes that the most effective way to help reverse the effects of the multigenerational breakdown of urban families is the Christcentered school.
Perhaps a better title for this article would be “The Majority Report.” Allow me to explain. The latest census count by the U.S. Census Bureau has revealed the following:
- Racial diversity among children is increasing at a fast pace. Minority children (that is, any group other than non-Hispanic white) accounted for 39 percent of the population under 18 in 2000, compared with 31 percent in 1990.
- In 2000, 60.9 percent of children in the United States were white, non-Hispanic; 17.1 percent were Hispanic; 14.7 percent were black, non-Hispanic; 3.5 percent were Asian/Pacific Islander; .9 percent were American Indian/Alaska Native; and 2.9 percent were some other race or 2 or more races. The percentage of children who are white, non-Hispanic has decreased from 74 percent in 1980 to 61 percent in 2000.
- Minority children accounted for 98 percent of the growth in the child population during the 1990s. Only 200,000 of the 8.7 million children added to the population between 1990 and 2000 were non-Hispanic white children.
- The number of Hispanic children has increased faster than the number of children in any other racial and ethnic group, growing from 9 percent of the child population in 1980 to 16 percent in 2000.
In other words, the majority of children who are being added to the child population in the United States are described and designated as “minority” children. Before long, however, these minority children will constitute a majority of the child population in the United States. A few other notable statistics include that these minority children represent the majority of children living in poverty and that they are academically and socially at risk. The majority of African American and Latino children live in urban centers. And it is in these large metropolitan areas where two out of three minority children are faring poorly in reading and math.
Two major factors converge to establish and sustain the academic and social disadvantages urban poor and minority children experience. This convergence begs for intervention by today’s childcare and early education providers.
The first factor relates to what happens to children before they begin school. The majority of the urban poor start school language deficient and developmentally delayed. According to a study, “about 60 percent of the kindergartners in neighborhoods where children tend to do poorly in school did not own a single book” (Horn 1999, 296). Another study cited a comparison of the early language experience of children living in professional families, those in working-class families, and those in welfare families: “An average child in a professional family would have accumulated experience with almost 45 million words, an average child in a working-class family would have accumulated experience with 26 million words, and an average child in a welfare family would have accumulated experience with 13 million words. By age 4, the average child in a welfare family might have 13 million fewer words of cumulative experience than the average child in a working-class family” (Hart and Risley 2000, 198).
As a result of these differences, one set of researchers concluded that “some children come to school with as little as 300 hours of ‘early language experience,’ while others come to school with as many as 3,000 hours of early language experience” (Horn 1999, 295). Such research led Hart and Risley to assert that “by the time children are 4 years old, intervention programs come too late and can provide too little experience to make up for the past” (2000, 2).
Compounding matters, a second factor is affecting the academic and social development of urban and minority children after they start school. Increasingly, there is a widening racial, cultural, and social gap between urban/minority students and the educators responsible for teaching them. Minority students account for 4 out of 10 students in public schools, yet 84 percent of elementary teachers are white females. While the nation has made appreciable gains in race relations in the past few decades, a considerable gulf remains between the suburban white female teacher and the minority child living in the city. This racial divide accounts for the number one reason that white teachers disproportionately label and place African American and Latino children in special education programs.
According to researchers at the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, “Minority students, specifically black and Native American students, are significantly more likely than white students to be identified as having a disability. For example, in most states, African American children are identified at one and a half to four times the rate of white children in the disability categories of mental retardation and emotional disturbance” (Harvard University 2002).
In school districts where the majority of teachers and students are white, African American and Latino students are at greater risk of being labeled and placed in special education tracks in which they have little hope of recovery. In Arizona, for example, “predominantly White districts label substantially higher percentages of their minority students as disabled compared to predominantly minority districts. Disability rates for Hispanic students are 48 percent higher, and for African American students are 29 percent higher, in White-dominated districts compared to minority-dominated districts. Meanwhile, predominately White districts label 34 fewer White students as disabled. That is, districts with predominately White teaching staffs have significantly higher minority special education rates” (Ladner 2003, 10). More than ever, the axiom that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure applies to the educational plight of urban and minority children.
According to Hart and Risley (2000, 205), a viable and promising solution for laying a foundation in the lives of academically and socially at-risk children can happen in a childcare program. They write that “to ensure that an average welfare child had a weekly amount of experience equal [to] that of the average child in a working-class family, merely in terms of hours of language experience of any kind (words heard), 41 hours per week of out-of-home experience as rich in words addressed to the child as that in an average professional home would be required. Thus, welfare children would need to be in substitute care 40 hours every week from birth onward.”
To begin addressing these academic and social disadvantages, caregivers of urban children must firmly believe that the culturally, economically, academically, and socially deprived child can learn and develop as well as any child given the right nurturing environment. These children, like all children, must have adults in their lives who do not look at their circumstances and performances and then draw negative conclusions about their abilities. Rather, their nurturers must start with a previously drawn conclusion about the Godgiven ability of these children and then seek to draw that out in the children’s performances. Likewise, caregivers must be culturally, socially, and racially sensitive to children, understanding the context in which they are nurturing and thus accommodating their training to the unique learning styles of the children without compromising quality. They must recognize that these children need their mercy, not their pity*.
Finally, today’s childcare provider and early education instructor can significantly intervene in the lives of urban children experiencing the early symptoms of ADD. The ADD that I am referencing, however, is not the medical condition of attention deficit disorder. Rather, it is the emotional condition of attention deprivation disorder. As indicated by the studies cited above, economically disadvantaged children can come to school with as much as 2,700 hours of early language experience deficit compared with their peers from more affluent backgrounds. The only cure for attention deprivation is attention.
Perhaps it would behoove us to take under advisement Jesus’ warning concerning children: “Take heed that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that in heaven their angels always see the face of My Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 18:10, NKJV). Since the Father has assigned angels in heaven who always attend to them, perhaps it is His desire that we also become to them as angels on earth who do the same.
* Pity focuses on the giver and is designed to make the giver feel better as a result of the act of giving. Mercy, on the other hand, focuses on the recipient and is designed to enable the recipient to do better. Usually, as a result of pity, the recipient is left in the same basic condition that prompted the gift, while as a result of mercy, the recipient is better enabled to do for himself so that he reaches the point that the gift is no longer needed.
References
Hart, Betty, and Todd Risley. 2000. Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing.
Harvard University. 2002. Racial inequity in special education: Executive summary for federal policy makers.
The Civil Rights Project (June). Retrieved August 26, 2003, from Harvard University site but is no longer available.
Horn, Royal Van. 1999. Inner-city schools. Phi Delta Kappan (December): 291–97.
Ladner, Matthew. 2003. Race and disability: Race bias in Arizona special education. Goldwater Institute, no. 178 (March): 9–10.
Urban Issue: Minority Report 4.4