🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992May24.172419.17892@awdprime.austin.ibm.com> curt@ekhadafi.austin.ibm.com (Curt Finch 903 2F021 curt@aixwiz.austin.ibm.com 512-838-2806) writes:
>I don't know exactly what Head Start is.
>I thought it was intended to ensure that little children under the age
>of 10 got enough food so as to not suffer from malnutrition so that
>their brains might have enough grey matter to actually learn something
>when they start school.

The food part is correct, but it is also pre-schooling and in some
parts of the country (I was exposed to Head Start in Virginia), it
includes summer activities and busy-work activities.  The local
high school (which was in the heart of the Newport News ghetto) had
regular events that were part of the Head Start program.  Most of
the government funded activities were oriented at the youngsters,
while the less monetarily oriented ones were aimed at the older
kids.  (In other words, my kid brother and I got a free lunch, but
my older brother didn't.)

But the problem, for example, with the ``food'' aspect of Head Start
is that rather than increase the nutrition of young children, it
encourages the parents to NOT feed the kids since they know that the
kids are going to get two meals a day from the state.  The ``nutrition''
of poor people in this country is not significantly different from that
of the most wealthy.  And studies which show how many people go to bed
hungry each night do nothing to address the total nutritional intake
of that individual, for example, the two free meals the state is
providing.  Nor do such studies address what ``hunger'' even means.
If you follow the nutritionists advice and "Eat Breakfast like a King,
Lunch like a Prince, and Dinner like a Pauper" you are likely to go to
bed hungry EVERY night, despite eating a better diet than those who
(like myself ...) load up at the dinner table.

There are other systemic problems with educating inner city children
that Head Start does not address.  For example, the best predictor of
the quality of life a child will have in the future is the family
structure today.  Even amongst very poor children, if the family is
intact, the children will excel.  As the family fragments, the
standard of living and expectations of the child rapidly decline.
Of course this is an unpopular line of thinking, made even more
unpopular by Dan Quayle and Murphy Brown, but it =is= borne out by
numbers which indicate that fewer than 10% of intact families are
poor, while than 80% of broken families are poor.

Since you are expecting an emotional and irrational outburst by now,
I'll end with the statement that Head Start is like most other social
welfare programs.  It's failings are the same - it creates a dependent
class and a bureaucracy to support that class.  It is basically
political co-dependency - if Head Start worked, the politicians that
dreamt it up wouldn't have a carrot any more.  If the politicians
just take it away, they again lose the carrot.  And since people only
notice change, they are forced to continually expand and enhance the
program since people are likely to notice that a program didn't
increase in size and take that as a lack of support.  As a result,
the political machine that gave us Head Start is compelled to
expand on it and bring more and more people into the fold.  That they
claim it works is meaningless - do you expect them to claim it
doesn't work?  That it doesn't work is proved by the numbers.  It
hasn't reached its goals despite a 1400% increase in funding.  Period.
-- 
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