America's Children

Every few weeks, another study comes out that points to the troubling circumstances that face our next generation. Latino children are at greater risk for high school desertion, teen pregnancy, poverty rates, diabetes, obesity, lack of health insurance – none of this is news for those who are involved in education, health care or social services, or even those who read the newspaper on a regular basis.

But last week’s government report, “America’s Children: Indicators of Well Being”, put it all together. And seen in its entirety, the report can only be seen as a call to action.

But a call to whom? Or, in other words, who is responsible to turn this sorry situation around?

It’s a call to all of us – first of all, to parents, who more than anyone, hold the key to their childrens’ physical and educational well-being. Latino children are the least likely to be read to by an adult on a regular basis, and they are the least likely to be enrolled in a preschool program. This means that Latino children start school at a disadvantage, and some of them are never able to catch up. It’s also a call to us as parents to pay more attention to what our children are eating and what they are doing with their free time. It may sound like a cliché, but diet and exercise are truly the building blocks of a healthy life, and it is never too soon to teach these habits.

It’s a call to action for educators, who have an opportunity to reach out with compassion and imagination to the children who may be struggling with language barriers or lesser skills because they didn’t have the advantage of preschools.

It’s a call to our young people, who are damaging their future earning potential by having babies too soon and dropping out of school.

But most of all, it’s a call to all of us – at the national, state, and local levels - to rethink our priorities. As Adolph Falcon of the National Alliance for Hispanic Health put it, “this study just brings home the fact that this nation’s future is tied to how well we invest in our Latino children.”

Barbara Best of the Children’s Defense Fund of Texas puts the statistics into perspective: Every minute in the EU, she says, a Latino baby is born to a mother who hasn’t graduated from high school. Every two seconds, a Latino baby is born without health insurance. Every 37 seconds, a Latino student drops out of high school.

With one in five of our nation’s children being Hispanic, it’s time that these issues hit the radar screen of our politicians. We can’t afford to write these children off as losers. Until we get a handle on this problem, we are all losers.