It's encouraging to see so many parents who are willing to go the extra mile for their children during the holiday season. The impulse to make sacrifices for children is perhaps our most precious gift and our most civilizing talent. Unfortunately, that gift is still withheld from millions of disadvantaged children. For them, the holiday glow is darkened by the shadow of lost opportunities.
It doesn't have to be that way. Listen to Owen B. Butler, former chairman of The Proctor & Gamble Company and chairman of the Committee for Economic Development, who recently provided the heads of the nation's Fortune 500 companies with clues to how we, as a nation, can give all children the chance to make the most of their lives:
"I believe that America is moving in the right direction. We are at risk, but tremendous effort is being made. We are going to solve the problem of restoring the challenge to our schools. I feel less confident about another, equally critical, problem. All the changes we make in our school system are not going to save the 25 percent of young people who enter the system so far behind that they can't cope with the undemanding situation in today's schools, much less than the challenges we are planning for tomorrow. I'm talking about the child born underweight, malnourished because of poverty. I'm talking about the child who receives no intellectual stimulation during the early years, the child who has never been read to, hardly even been talked to. This child is placed in the first grade - one classroom, one teacher - with children who mothers had good prenatal care, who were well-nourished, well-nurtured infants, who were stimulated when they were two, three, and four years old. The children of poverty are not less capable than other children. But to ask them to compete in these circumstances is patently unfair.
"We need to address this problem, which has roots deep in our history. Remember, for 100 years in much of the United States it was against the law to teach anyone with dark skin how to read and write. And for another 50 years after that, we didn't care whether people with dark skin learned or not.
"I was the beneficiary of one of the greatest public education systems in America - in Baltimore. It was a white system. I joined the Navy and received five more years of superb education - also for whites only. In 1941, when I joined the Navy, a dark-skinned person could not become a seaman - I don't mean an officer, I mean a seaman. If you were black, the only Naval position open to you was as an officer's steward.
"Today, our cities are full of the products of that kind ofrepression. Poverty in our rural areas mostly white, some black - is also widespread, the result of repression but of equally damaging neglect. Twenty percent of our children below school age live in poverty. Most of them are malnourished, underweight, and improperly nurtured.
"Fixing the schools is not going to fix the poverty problem. We must intervene. We must recognize that every young person needs to reach first-grade age healthy, properly nourished and properly stimulated. It f the parents are unwilling or unable to accomplish this goal - and unfortunately many parents in poverty are not able - then we must step in and do it for them. We owe it to ourselves. American business cannot prosper in the 21st century is our cities are in flames.
"There is hardly a major city in the United States that does not have a 50 percent school dropout rate. What kind of country are we going to have if 50 percent of the people in every major city are unemployable? People are not going to live forever in the midst of wealth without demanding a share of it. If we don't give them a change to earn a decent living, we will either have to give it to them or they will take it. Look at any two-class society in the world - Manila, Puerto Rico, Mexico City. Where do the wealthy live? Behind walls, with barbed wire, glass and guards with submachine guns protecting the perimeter. In other words, they live in a prison. That's not the life I want for my grandchildren ...
"For our own sake, we need to invest in the children of poverty. Ifwe make the investment during their first years - from prenatal care through the age of four - those children can succeed. We will get our investment back plus interest, plus inflation, plus a 300 percent to 500 percent profit. This is not a guess, it is proved by research. There is no more profitable investment that we can make.
"This is the economic reason for action. But, there is a more important reason, a reason that overwhelms economics. And that reason has to do with what kind of country we are and what kind of country we want to be. This nation is unique. We are not a race, we are not a place, we are not a religion, we are not an ancestry. We are nothing as a nation but a vision. We have been striving to realize this vision for over 200 years. We need to continue to strive toward its achievement. We will realize that vision only when every child born in or brought into the country has an equal opportunity to fulfill his or her full potential as a producer and as a human being.
"Poetry says it better than prose:
0 beautiful, for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years.
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
"Think about those words from 'America the Beautiful.' Compare the reality of the South Bronx or Watts to the dream of an 'Alabaster city ... undimmed by human tears.' We have a long way to go to fulfill our dream. But it is the right dream. At this point in our history, when we are at peace, when we are prosperous, we have the opportunity to turn all of our energies and all our resources to the achievement of that dream for our cities."
We can seize the opportunities Butler speaks of It's going to take time, effort, sacrifice - in short, a willingness to go the extra mile for all children. But, as this season so clearly illustrates, that talent is well within our reach.