Reading: Whatever It Takes

Last updated Jul 23, 2022

• Reading notes

Parent from poor socioeconomic backgrounds are disadvantaged:

• they may not understand the effect of their action on their children’s cognitive development
• they may not have the cognitive bandwidth to effect change
• they may model their actions after unhealthy examples
• their parenting approach may be built upon false assumptions

Harmlen Children Zone is an-encompassing programs for poverty-striken children in Harlem.

Harlem Children Zone’s approach is two-pronged in many ways.

1. they provide services to both children and parents. They give children a nuturing environement and teach them knowledge, habits and concepts that they would otherwised not be exposed to. I think of these services as a security net and a compass. They also provide lessons to parents to have help them understand the effect of their action on their children’s development. For programs targeting parents of younger children, these lessons are acommpanied with cash rewards and free lunches to attract parents. As the target age of the children increases, the amount of external incentives decreases and parents are encouraged to attend for the sake of their children.

2. they provide full-time programs to a selective group of children and part-time enrichment programs. They create a pipeline to ensure that they see a small group of children through to adulthood. This pipeline defy the negative impact of their community. They also open up enrichment classes to the wider community, so that the kids who did not go through the pipeline will be more ready to receive changes brought about by the kids who did.

Canon Analogy: If you fired a cannon from the top of thre highest moutain inthe world, the cannonball might travel a long way, but it would eventually fall to earth beacuse of the power of gravity. And the faster you shot the canonnball, the farther it would travel before falling to earth. And if you shoot the cannonball fast enough, it will actually escape earth’s gravity and go into orbit.

A single program for poor children is not enough to provide escape velocity, to give the children the momentum to orbit their communities and not be damaged. The gravity of the community always pulls the child back down, they may stay in the air for a year or to, but eventually, they will begin to fall closer and closer back down to the values and performance level of the community. A series of program is needed to escape velocity. The key is to intervene younger and guide them with external stimulation for as long as possible.

• Baby College
  • Weekly parenting classes
  • Parents were not made to feel that they were inferior, or being given a favor. Instead, they were made to feel appreciated and doing a good civic deed.
  • “We want you to come and share your expertises”, Instructors solicited ideas and opinons from parents, with plenty og praise and sparing amount of criticism.
• Harlem Gem Kindergarten
• Three-year-old journey
  • Weekly parenting classes
• Pre-kindergarten classes
  • Language focused
• Promise Academy
  • Elementary School & Middle School
  • High emphasis on standardlized testing. Strong emphasis on test scores because scoring well is an efficient way to gaurantee stability in student’s future, and also because these scores are the metric used to rank schools.
  • Failure of Promise Academy Middle School: Parent believed that the school made a ‘promise’, hence did not put in effort. School’s succcess is highly dependent on paren’ts cooperation (ie. parents need to bring their kids to school)

“Seeing poor children without enough to eat made middle-class votes feel sad and guilty. Seeing poor parents who were using welfare checks ot buy steaks and big-screen TVs made them feel indignat and resentful.”

Remove emphasis on how different policies make people feel, instead focus on what different policies and interventions actually accomplish.

“He didn’t think it was right to hold himself or his employees to a looser standard of achievement simply becausee they happened to be making the world a better place”

Research by Cognitive Neurologist, Martha Farah:

• Poorere children lagged most significantly in language, long-term memory, working memory, cognitive control
• Children’s scores on language tests were predicted by parent’s cognitive stimulation
• Children’s scores on memory tests were predicted by social/emotional nurturance

According to Sociologist, Annette Lareau:

• Middle class families follow a strategy known as #concerted-cultivation , where they plan organized activities in their children’s life with the intention of aiding their development. These children are viewed as apprentice adults and are encourages to ask questions, and challenge current thinking
• Middle class parents view their children’s activities as their own responsibility and tend to get involved (though sometimes obsessively)
• Concerted cultivated children tend to have less freedom in their everday activites, but more freedom in talking back, questioning authority and challenging rules & consequences.
• Working-class and poor families allow their children much more freedom in planning their own time, but are told to defer decision making to adults and treat them with respect.
• I think that the consequence of these parent styles sound intuitive, but not sure how much parenting style is deteremined by socioeconomic level, as compared to other factors like culture.