Childhood Hunger

Bill Shore’s Letters

Letter From a Baltimore Classroom

March 1998

Dear Friend,

I've always tried to spend time in Mollie's school. Her first elementary school, New Hampshire Estates, went from Kindergarten through second grade. Like most public schools it faced the challenge of educating a diverse group of students, in classes that were too large, with a students whose foundations in the fundamentals were uneven. A committed principal created one excuse after another to bring parents into the school buildings. Winter concerts, read-a-book week, young authors conferences, Spring concerts, silent auction day, career day. Parental participation correlates to early academic achievement.

There are many reasons I like being in my daughter's school. One is that I like to compare and contrast it with other schools to which my work takes me. One week, shortly after spending a morning in Mollie's school, I went to visit an afterschool program in Baltimore called The Door. Share Our Strength sponsored a nutrition education program there and to help us promote it, the Vice President's wife, Tipper Gore, was coming to read a book to the kids. The classroom was just like my daughter's classroom in almost every way, except for one glaring difference. As in, Mollie's school there were aspirational posters on the wall declaring "I can be whatever I dream I can be," "Never settle for less than your best" and "To achieve your dreams, learn your ABC's." There were maps and globes and other colorful learning tools. There were computers. But the one, inescapable contrast, was that on the front door of the classroom in Baltimore, there was a large stenciled sign: "If I see a gun, or anything that looks like a gun, I will not pick it up. I will go and get an adult. Because guns can hurt me. And I want to be safe."

I try to imagine what it must feel like as a parent to drop off a child at a place where such a sign is necessary, what it must feel like for this sign to be the first thing you see every morning when you drop your child off at school, and for it to be the last thing you see at the end of the day. It seemed such a lame, sorry attempt at protecting these kids.

In the commotion surrounding the visit of the Vice President's wife, no one else seemed to notice the sign, but once I'd read the words I couldn't concentrate on the event. Instead I walked over to the Joe Ehrman, the man who runs the program. Joe was a former football player with the Baltimore Colts, an NFL linebacker who'd gone into the ministry after retiring and then started this program to help kids.

I ask Joe what the neighborhood is like.

He shakes his head and says "One way during the day, another at night."

"Joe, what is up with that sign?" I asked.

"This is a tough neighborhood, Bill." He explained in a soft and patient voice. "These kids see everything. They see drugs. They see violence. And they see weapons." And if they see a gun we want them to know what to do. As you can imagine," he continued, "if Share Our Strength is here because these kids have hunger and nutrition issues, you can be sure they also have issues with access to housing, access to health care, and a whole range of needs that are all tied together."

We stood there looking out over the kids who were just first, second, and third graders. They are at an age when school is still fun for them. They are sweet, mischievous perhaps, but still innocent. Yet as we stand staring at them we know that if we return to their classroom a mere six to eight years from now, many of the same kids we now watch frolicking will be in serious, perhaps life-changing trouble. Some of the girls will have become pregnant. Some of the boys will have joined gangs. Some of each will have criminal records. It seems impossible, looking at their six-year-old smiles, to believe this will happen right before our eyes. Or that we will let it happen. But statistics, past experience, and inadequate resources assure us that it will. One moment we can hold them in our arms and the next they are slipping right between our fingers. Botantists watch plants grow using time-lapse photography. They can isolate the moment when a plant bends toward the light. They can freeze-frame, stop and study it. But when is the moment a growing child bends toward darkness? And why must we wait to watch it on the 11:00 news.

What is the true condition of America's children today? Many are doing just fine. But 14 million children still live below the poverty line and millions of others are at risk from guns, lack of health care, and numerous other threats. Every day 2,756 children drop out of high school every day and 5,753 children are arrested. The essayist Roger Rosenblatt captured the hypocrisy that disguises our neglect in the title of a article he wrote for the New York Times Magazine called: "The Society That Pretends To Love Children." Marian Wright Edelman asks: "How do we honestly examine and transform the values and priorities of the wealthiest nation in history, which lets its children be the poorest group of Americans and lets a child get killed by guns every hour and a half? ... How do we make it easier rather than harder for parents to balance work and family responsibilities and to get the community and financial support they need to carry out the most important task in America?"

It depends of course on who you ask. The Carnegie report will quantify how many children are at risk, but other foundations will brag about the opportunities that are unique to American children and that don't exist anywhere else in the world. Neither are wrong. But maybe we're asking the wrong question. Maybe the question is not what is the true condition of America's children today, but rather what should be the experience of all American children.

Hard times test the character of a nation. But in a different way, so do good times. These are indeed good times, and our blessings are not to be denied. The federal budget is in surplus, state governments also enjoy extra resources. Wealth is being created at unprecedented levels in America. Yet more of our children are in need than ever before. This is the paradox of America at the turn of the century. This is the challenge of our generation.

History's defining moments are often born of crisis. But the unlikely genesis of today's defining moment is an economic boom. Unemployment is at a 24 year low. Inflation barely exists. The stock market roars. And America is at peace. If this is not the set of conditions under which our nation can and should mount a successful campaign to save the next generation of at-risk children, then I don't know what is.

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