Tuesday, July 20, 2004

Head start in a circle game

I'm writing a grant, focused on Spanish speaking Hill residents. Recent studies have shown poor health literacy is costly in money and people. The government (your guess good what which figures got their attention) is finally handing out money, we want some, and we need it. Composing a section titled Statement of Need, it's long. Children in the suburbs come to kindergaten trailing toys and a vocabulary 5,000 words longer behind them, already leaving behind not no child of the city still near dumb to say how hot the day is. Poorer in other possessions, they're not even given self-possession of their tongues. Their tongues and pens do more than 30% worse than the stated average seeming to Supe Reggie Mayo(nnaise) to defy him in spite. Despite the brand-new, state money built buildings brandishing in the sun their glass faces under the noses of critics of the public system, they start off at the end of a cycle. Parents fuck kids up, they don't mean to but they do. Critical parental involvement hard to take; any parental involvement is critical to the success of kids in urban schools. But a third of the adults in New Haven can't read well enough to fill out an application, read a food label or prescription, or a simple story to a Goodnight Moon child much less any higher level-reading or problem solving skills that another third of adults lack but need to help their Where the Wild Things Are grown ones. How's head start to help when it all revolves around the circle of no words. It's not fair. Perhaps we are products of our class. Or our classiness, or class of values. (Cause if it's class as the sole determinant, then account for Justin Morelli or David Brailey, even Dr. Schiller could barely teach them to read, take that Marxist.) But if it's all about the class then it's up to the lucky literates to teach a better one, get grants and write a world more can read in.