Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

The Path to Freedom
estimate, between 1980 and 1985 alone more American infants
and children died of preventable disease, malnutrition and other
consequences of dire poverty than all American battle deaths
during the Vietnam War.
Some programmes wisely instituted on the Federal or state level
in America deal with malnutrition. The Special Supplemental
Food Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), school
breakfast and lunch programmes, the Summer Food Service
Program - all have been shown to work, although they do not get
to all the people who need them. So rich a country is well able to
provide enough food for all its children.
Some deleterious effects of undernutrition can be undone;
iron-repletion therapy, for example, can repair some consequences
of iron-deficiency anaemia. But not all of the damage is
reversible. Dyslexia - various disorders that impair reading skills -
may affect fifteen per cent of us or more, rich and poor alike. Its
causes (whether biological, psychological or environmental) are
often undetermined. But methods now exist to help many with
dyslexia to learn to read.
No one should be unable to learn to read because education is
unavailable. But there are many schools in America in which
reading is taught as a tedious and reluctant excursion into the
hieroglyphics of an unknown civilization, and many classrooms in
which not a single book can be found. Sadly, the demand for adult
literacy classes far outweighs the supply. High-quality early education
programmes such as Head Start can be enormously successful
in preparing children for reading. But Head Start reaches only a
third to a quarter of eligible pre-schoolers, many of its programmes
have been enfeebled by cuts in funding, and it and the
nutrition programmes mentioned are under renewed Congressional
attack as I write.
Head Start is criticized in a 1994 book called The Bell Curve by
Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray. Their argument has been
characterized by Gerald Coles of the University of Rochester:
First, inadequately fund a program for poor children, then
deny whatever success is achieved in the face of overwhelming
obstacles, and finally conclude that the program
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