From Harlem to India: You Have to Read to Your Children

Several weeks ago on the weekly Public Radio International show “This American Life” there was a fascinating/disturbing/uplifting story on the philosophy and programs of the urban non-profit Harlem Children’s Zone. Harlem is a poor, majority African-American neighborhood in New York City, less than 10 miles from Wall Street. It is an area that is stuck in a poverty trap, not uncomparable to that of certain areas of rural India, with comparatively low levels of education and income to the American middle class. The schools in the area are inadequate and government services in general are less effective in Harlem than in New York’s wealthy downtown and suburbs.

The episode of “This American Life” focuses on the story of Geoffrey Canada reaching the conclusion after years of frustrating social work that “the most effective time to intervene in the lives of poor kids is between the ages of 0-3, when the only people who can really give that help are the parents.” This conclusion was the result of research conducted by Harlem Children’s Zone staff and supported by rigorous child development research. The most stunning of these studies is discussed in the following quote comes from a 2006 article written by Paul Tough, who was also the narrator of the “This American Life” piece, for the New York Times Magazine:

Researchers began peering deep into American homes, studying up close the interactions between parents and children. The first scholars to emerge with a specific culprit in hand were Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, child psychologists at the University of Kansas, who in 1995 published the results of an intensive research project on language acquisition. Ten years earlier, they recruited 42 families with newborn children in Kansas City, and for the following three years they visited each family once a month, recording absolutely everything that occurred between the child and the parent or parents. The researchers then transcribed each encounter and analyzed each child’s language development and each parent’s communication style. They found, first, that vocabulary growth differed sharply by class and that the gap between the classes opened early. By age 3, children whose parents were professionals had vocabularies of about 1,100 words, and children whose parents were on welfare had vocabularies of about 525 words. The children’s I.Q.’s correlated closely to their vocabularies. The average I.Q. among the professional children was 117, and the welfare children had an average I.Q. of 79.

In the radio story, Tough and distinguished economist and social program evaluator James Heckman go on to explain how small early childhood interventions, like parenting education and pre-school (tools currently used by Harlem Children’s Zone), have proven to have outsized impact.

Canada decided that, considering limited resources, the most effective way to uplift the Harlem community was not to help adults get themselves out of poverty, but to have those adults focus on preparing their kids for a more prosperous life. It is in many ways a devastating and unattractive conclusion because the theory suggests that 19 and 20 year old parents are likely beyond saving from an economically disadvantaged life. As Canada himself says in response to the assertion that his work chooses to focus on kids at the expense of the parents, “It is probably one of the toughest choices I have made, but our choice is to focus on [the kids]… so that you don’t end up with the same cycle going over and over again.”

The concept that early childhood interventions are the most resourceful ways of approaching economic development for the poor and underserved is of obvious importance to equitable Indian development. If children from poor households are going to succeed in the knowledge economy of India, the research cited in this story suggests that interventions need to begin from early childhood.

Though governments and NGOs can not and should not ignore the needs of those who are suffering now, it may just be that Harlem Children’s Zone approach is one that deserves more attention and a larger piece of the social programs pie.

Happy Lakshmi Pooja.

*For another wonderfully thoughtful and engaging story from “This American Life” listen to this great story on the financial crisis recommended by my colleague Amy Mowl.