child care - Digital Library Collections

INTRODUCTION
yield more than $100 billion dollars. That is
enough to end childhood poverty, fund child care
for working families, and ensure every child the
healthy start that the tobacco industry has done so
much to destroy.
5. Why is the United States, save Somalia
(which lacks a legally constituted government to
act), alone among nations in failing to ratify the
Convention on the Rights of the Child? All the other
nations of the world are willing to commit to the
convention's goals of ending illegal child labor,
sexual exploitation, violent abuse of, and capital
punishment for children. Why do we refuse to
pledge to make reasonable efforts to give all of our
nation's children the adequate health care, food,
shelter, and education that should be every child's
birthright?
1. We can afIlfm rather than undermine our
children's strengths and differences. A wonderful
animal parable illustrates how so many institutions
and professionals hurt rather than help children.
Once upon a time the animals decided they
must do something heroic to meet the problems of
the new world. So they organized a school. They
adopted an activity curriculum consisting of running,
climbing, swimming, and flying. And to make
it easy to administer, all of the animals had to take
all ofthe subjects.
The duck was excellent in swimming-better, in
fact, than his instructor-and made passing grades
in flying. Since he was slow in running, he had to
stay after school and drop swimming to practice
running. The duck kept this up until his feet were
badly worn and he was only average, at last, in
swimming. But average was acceptable in that
school, so nobody worried about that except the
duck.
The rabbit started at the top of the class in
running but had a nervous breakdown because of
so much makeup work in swimming. The squirrel
was excellent in climbing until he became frustrated
in the flying class, where his teacher made
him start from the ground up instead of from the
treetop down. He also developed charley horses
from overexertion and got a C in climbing and a D
in running. The eagle was a problem child and was
disciplined severely in the climbing class, for even
though he beat all the others to the top of the tree,
he insisted on using his own way to get up there.
At the end of the year an abnormal eel who
could swim exceedingly well and also run, climb,
and fly a little had the highest average and was
How We Can Stand for Children
and Help Transform America
valedictorian. Prairie dogs kept their child out of
school and fought the tax levy because the administration
would not add digging and burrowing to
the curriculum. They apprenticed their child to a
badger and later joined the groundhogs and gophers
to start a successful private school.
2. We can work coUaboratively. No single person,
institution, or government agency can meet aU
ofour children's and families needs. But each ofus,
taking one or more of those needs, can together
weave the seamless web of family and community
and private sector support children need. We must
work together and resist the political either/or-ism
and organizational turf-ism that plague so much
policy development, advocacy, service, and organizing
today. Good parenting and good commuruty,
employer, and governmental supports for parents
are inextricably intertwined.
Good moral principles that are professed and
practiced at home, on the job, in our communities
and public life together create a positive culture for
raising good children. Good volunteers and good
voters who take both service and advocacy seriously
are required. Good policy arises out of good
politics, which arises out of informed and active
parents and citizens who stand up for and organize
effectively for children. Good mentoring programs
require committed, sensitive people who will stick
with children over a sustained period and full-time
staff and management infrastructures to train, deploy,
and monitor them.
Great visions remain simply that unless they
are broken down into manageable and achievable
pieces for action that then are well implemented.
CHI L D R EN' S D E FEN S E FUN D xix