Looking out: If children could vote
By Brandon Astor Jones
"First World privilege and Third World deprivation and rage are struggling to coexist not only in our nation's capital but all over an America that has the capacity but not the moral commitment and political will to protect its young ... we need to stop punishing children because we don't like their parents." — Marian Wright Edleman
Marion Wright Edleman spends most of her life fighting the social and political forces that systematically abuse children. In 1973, she founded the Children's Defence Fund, an organisation that lobbies for social programs and for the rights of children.
Instead of times getting better for children, they appear to be getting worse. Surely in the present political climate, Edleman must be waging her most ferocious battle ever.
Politicians in the USA have become far more concerned about dollars than about children. Throwing terms like "lazy welfare cheats" and "parental parasites" around has served only to charge the putrid political air with a special kind of general welfare-parent contempt. Never mind that only a small percentage of parents on welfare could justly be categorised with such terms — it has become politically expedient to use them.
While it is true that some welfare recipients do take unfair advantage of the system, logic continues to tell us that the system is necessary. Attacking the system (by taking welfare funds away from the parents) is a lot like arguing with those parents and, in an irrational desire to win that argument at any cost, walking up to their children and brutally beating each of them with your clenched fist. By and large, that is basically what politicians are doing while claiming to have the best interests of children at heart.
What is worse is that it does not stop with welfare. Their compassionless and extremely hypocritical attitude can be found in other areas that have a direct impact on children. Education is but one of those areas. Just about every school administrator in the USA is under political pressure to cut spending.
Little wonder so many people are pulling their children out of public schools. Many parents have started "home schooling" so that their children can get the closer attention they need and deserve. Public school teachers are, in student numbers, outrageously over-burdened in their classrooms. In Georgia, a first grade teacher, Patricia Jones, notes that her students "are more demanding upon time than ever before, and when [she has so many] of them, it's just not beneficial ..."
The Clark County, Georgia, school superintendent, John Balentine, has said, "This district can't afford the low pupil-teacher ratio that we've had". When he was forced to lay off and/or terminate a large number of teachers, he was quoted as saying, "It's the hardest decision I've ever made, but it was the only option".
Sometimes words are hard to find when I think of how children are being treated by certain politicians who profess to care so much about them. Alas, a large number of youngsters are systematically graduating from elementary and high schools who can barely read. You have to ask yourself: how many dollars did their illiteracy save?
There are children in several so-called "Third World" countries who are getting much better educations than the children in the United States. That fact, in and of itself, ought to give cause for alarm and concern to even the most posturing and hypocritical politician. For there are indeed some things that a great saving of money inevitably leads to, not the least of which is an even greater waste of human potential.
I hope some of those politicians will see, and more importantly heed, Edleman's compassionate words of wisdom: "Never work just for money or for power. They won't save your soul or help you sleep at night ... [Children] who don't vote have no line of credit with people who are elected and thus pose no threat to those who act against [their] interests. I realise now that I fight for the moral and political health of America as a whole and for her position in the world at large."
[The writer is a prisoner on death row in the United States. He is happy to receive letters commenting on his columns. He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, EF-122216, G2-51, GD&CC, PO Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233, USA.]