“The (other) thing with me is that it’s personal” (Conniff, 2002). I know this quote from Edward Zigler, Ph.D. is not very scholarly, but this quote’s simplicity and power regarding all children and their rights to healthy development speaks for itself.
Marion Wright Edelman said that professionals and the community “must gain greater technical proficiency in how bureaucracies work, how programs are administered, how services are delivered and how decisions are made at the federal, state, and local level” to affect change (McAdoo, 2007). Marian Wright Edelman helped me see that we must be experts, as well as students of the decision making process.
“I had a built-in passion that it was important to make a real contribution to the world and to fix all the social injustices that existed in the world.” (Derman-Sparks, 2010) I totally relate! Sometimes, I am very idealistic regarding one person’s ability to fix injustice.
“Children are learning very early that there are power issues and that there are some identities that give you more social power than others….. It doesn’t allow children to grow up to their fullest potential, their fullest abilities” (Derman-Sparks, 2010). To think that our children see and internalize the power discrepancies really hurts. The fact that many adults pretend that those power discrepancies do not exist hurts our ability to help children and their families.
References:
Conniff, R. (2002, June). Edward Zigler – The Progressive Interview – One of the Founders of the Head Start Program. Retrieved from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1295/is_6_66/ai_87855090/?tag=content;col1
McAdoo, H. P., (2007). Black Families.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications
The Passion of Early Childhood. [Filmstrip]. (2010).
United States: Laureate Education, Inc.