Making a Difference in Harlem

How can we make a difference in the lives of children who live in poverty? I recently learned of a man named Geoffrey Canada who founded a program in Harlem called “The Harlem Children’s Zone.” Geoffrey had his second child in his mid forties and became aware of all of the research on stimulating a child’s brain. He was working in Harlem with families in poverty and he sent his staff out to see if low income parents knew about this research, they did not.

Geoffrey set out to change the culture of Harlem, so that teenage pregnancy and going to prison were not the norm. He founded The Harlem Children’s Zone which offers a holistic system of education, social-service and community-building programs to children and families in 97 intercity blocks of Harlem, 10,000 kids in all.

The programs at the Children’s Zone are based on research that shows that the most effective time to intervene in the life of a low income child is the ages of 0-3, when only the parents can be the one to make a difference. The research highlights the benefits of parents singing songs, playing games and talking with their young children. The more parents interact with their children with language, the more the child grasps language skills.

In a 1980’s study completed in Kansas City two sets of families were studied side by side. One set of families was on welfare and the other set of families had parents who were professionals. The study found that the biggest difference between the two families was language, the number of words the children heard during the first three years of life. Children whose parents were professionals heard 20 million more words during the first three years of life than those whose parents were on welfare. The words were mostly just the regular jibber jabber of a parent talking with their child. But those words had a profound effect of the child’s verbal ability. This study found that the number one determiner of later success in school was not family income, race or a parent’s educational level, it was the sheer number of words the parents spoke to their children.

In the early 1990’s economist James Heckman from the University of Chicago completed research on programs that are typically offered to disadvantaged youth. The study found that programs like job training , GED programs and programs for dropouts were all found as not helpful. These programs are all based on the belief that young people who can’t find a job and are struggling often lack a skill and if we can help them learn that missing skill, they will be ok. Heckman found that youth in these programs were missing basic skills and abilities such as the ability to communicate, ability to solve simple mathematical puzzles, read the newspaper, self-control, motivation, get out of bed, engage and be open to ideas. This led him to ask “How are these skills formed?”
Heckman found that if these basic skills are not formed by the time a child reaches kindergarten, it becomes harder and harder. If a child has not learned to read by age 8-10 it was very hard for them to learn and if by early adolescent you have not learned the non-cognitive skills (motivation, self-control, engagement) it was harder to learn those as well.
The good news was the reverse is also true.
If you can get to a poor child early on… even small interventions can have huge effects.
Another study was conducted on a group of disadvantaged African American children.
In one group in this study the children attended a basic pre-school program 2 ½ hours a day for five days a week for two years. The other group did not attend this type of program. Upon following up on these children the researchers found that those who attended the pre-school program showed a positive difference in crime rates, integration into the larger society. home ownership and salary rates.

One final study focused on the kind of language used in homes where parents are on welfare versus professional parents. This study counted the number of encouraging words versus discouraging words used when speaking to the children. The study found that children with professional parents heard 500,000 words of encouragement and only 80,000 words of discouragement by the age of three. On the other hand, children whose parents were on welfare heard 200,000 words of discouragements and only 80,000 words of encouragement by the age of 3.

Physical and verbal punishment have a huge effect on child development. Geoffrey Canada shared that “One of the things that frustrated him and others working in communities with low income and disadvantaged kids is parents telling kids “Get over here” “sit down” “shut up” “Don’t you make me come over there and get you” “you just listen”. And that is a two year old they are talking to, who talks to a two year old like that? Lot’s of people who really believe that the parent’s job is to make their child listen and become passive, so the child does what ever the parent wants. In this scenario, the child has no opinion to express, doesn’t leave the parents side, and doesn’t touch anything without the parents permission. Many parents believe that a child that looks like this is a “good” child. So you see all of this energy being put into shutting a child down, into making them stop. This is done without realizing how a child’s brain develops , a child’s brain develops by exploring their world. Our job as parents is to help our children explore the world”.
It is counter-intuitive for many parents to believe that a good kid is not a quiet kid.

We have been trying to improve the lives of children by focusing on their parents… now the children themselves are being focused on. Break the cycle of poverty at the childhood level. It is hard to “give up” on those who are in their late teens or early 20’s…. but if we can teach them to be good parents, their children can make it out of poverty. It all starts by reading to you children, every night.
So far this is working. Last year, the first youth who have been involved in the program entered 3rd grade and took the NY State achievement tests. The results were astonishing, the children are all poor, African American and most from single parent homes, some with parents who were teenage mothers, high school dropouts or had trouble with the law. All of the children have reading scores above the NYC average, their math scores were phenomenal, more than 95% of them on grade level.

The information on what children need to develop in the most positive way is nothing new to families in middle class America, but it is different for the families in Harlem who know nothing about the “latest research.”
The big question is why does it have to be this way?
Why can’t we do this for all children?

For more information on “The Harlem Children’s Zone visit their website: http://www.hcz.org/home