The times have changed. Poverty is less prominent in the news. President Johnson’s Great Society Plan is a thing of the past. The War On Poverty that brought into being the Elementary and Secondary Education Act has long since evolved. President Johnson and Congress, at the time, understood the connection. Children born into poverty have greater challenges. Poverty brings into play malnutrition, which impedes intellectual development.
In 1983, with the publication of the A Nation at Risk, we left behind the War on Poverty and instead immersed ourselves in the Imperative for Education Reform. In what was paradoxically stated as a means “to provide solutions” and “avoid scapegoats” we, as a country, did each. The Commission on Education accepted the Reagan Administration’s charter, to assess the quality of teaching and learning, to compare our schools with others internationally, and to look at the problems in education, negating that these might be a reflection of societal circumstances.
Research tells us as did a record reduction in poverty coupled with greater student achievement during the Johnson years, that poverty deflates the chances that a child might succeed. With little food and less intellectual stimulation at home, an impoverished child struggles to fulfill the promise that he or she “by virtue of his or own efforts… can hope to attain the mature and informed judgement needed to secure gainful employment, and to manage their own lives, thereby serving not only their own interests but also the progress of society itself.”
Nonetheless, since the nation took a turn towards assessment, we no longer see what sits right there in front of us, in classrooms everywhere in this country. We look pass the faces, the feelings, and the famine. We look only at the “facts,” the formulas and the figures test scores generate. We no longer attempt to understand the families of our children. Might we ask ourselves how can we expect the youth to navigate the choppy waters without a safe shelter, a stable home, or food in their belly? If our history tells the story the answer is no, we cannot. We do not. Instead, we move on.
After the release of The Nation At Risk each consecutive Administration bore down. Examine. Evaluate. Test, test, test! In 1994 we sought to create Improved America’s Schools with standardization as the foundation. In 2002, we once more Left No Children are most affected. U.S. Child Poverty Second Highest Among Developed Nations: Report. While much has changed and more has stayed the same or worsened, what remains stable is, Malnutrition, Poverty, and Intellectual Development are inextricably linked. Today, what is begs attention. When we attended to poverty, as a nation, we saw improvement. Once curriculum became the focus, again the struggle continued. National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP There are nearly 24 million young children under 6 years old in the United States. The prevalence of malnutrition in children is staggering. Globally, nearly 195 million children younger than five years are undernourished. Malnutrition is most obvious in the developing countries, where the condition often takes severe forms; images of emaciated bodies in famine-struck or war-torn regions are tragically familiar. Yet milder forms are more common, especially in developed nations. Indeed, in 1992 an estimated 12 million American children consumed diets that were significantly below the recommended allowances of nutrients established by the National Academy of Sciences. Undernutrition triggers an array of health problems in children, many of which can become chronic. It can lead to extreme weight loss, stunted growth, weakened resistance to infection and, in the worst cases, early death. The effects can be particularly devastating in the first few years of life, when the body is growing rapidly and the need for calories and nutrients is greatest. Inadequate nutrition can also disrupt cognition-although in different ways than were previously assumed. At one time, underfeeding in childhood was thought to hinder mental development solely by producing permanent, structural damage to the brain. More recent work, however, indicates that malnutrition can impair the intellect by other means as well. Furthermore, even in cases where the brain’s hardware is damaged, some of the injury may be reversible. These new findings have important implications for policies aimed at bolstering achievement among underprivileged children. Scientists first investigated the link between malnutrition and mental performance early in this century, but the subject did not attract serious attention until decades later. in the 1960s increasing evidence of undernutrition in industrial countries including the U.S.. along with continuing concerns in other developing countries prompted research to examine the lasting effects of food deprivation. A number of studies in Latin America, Africa and the U.S. reported that on intelligence tests children with a history of malnutrition attained lower scores than children of similar social and economic status who were properly nourished. These surveys had various experimental limitations that made them inconclusive, but later research has firmly established that undernutrition in early life can limit long-term intellectual development. Worry over Brain Damage… Gradually, though, investigators recognized that the main-effect model, as we have termed this view, was too simplistic. For instance, the emphasis on the first two years of life proved some what misguided. Brain growth in that period is not always terminated irreversibly in undernourished children. Rather it may be put on hold temporarily; if diet improves by age three or so, growth of the brain may continue at close to a normal pace. Conversely, injury to the brain can occur even when a child suffers malnutrition after the first two years of life-a sign that providing adequate nutrition throughout childhood is important to cognitive development. Focusing exclusively on the first two years of life is thus inadequate. Furthermore, although severe underfeeding in infancy can certainly lead to irreparable cognitive deficits, as the main-effect model predicts, the model cannot fully account for intellectual impairment stemming from more moderate malnutrition. This flaw became apparent in the 1960s, when researchers showed that mildly undernourished children from middle- or upper-income families (whose nutrient deficits stemmed from medical conditions) did not suffer the same intellectual troubles as did mildly undernourished children in impoverished communities. If poor nutrition impaired cognition only by structurally altering the brain, the two groups should have performed alike. Something else had to be at work as well. In or her words, factors such as income, education and other aspects of the environment could apparently protect children against the harmful effects of a poor diet or could exacerbate the insult of malnutrition. No Energy to Learn This fundamental shift in understanding produced increased optimism about the prospects for remediation; if decreased social interaction was partly at fault for cognitive impairment, then social and intellectual remediation could presumably help make up for deficits in the youngsters’ experiences. (To Read More …) References…
Children represent 24 percent of the population, but they comprise 34 percent of all people in poverty 1 Among all children, 45 percent live in low-income families and approximately one in every five (22 percent) live in poor families. Young children under 6 years of age appear to be particularly vulnerable, with 49 percent living in low-income families and 25 percent living in poor families.
Malnutrition, Poverty, and Intellectual Development
For many years, scientists considered the connection between nutrition and intellectual development to be straightforward. They assumed that poor nutrition was primarily a worry from conception to age two, when the brain grows to roughly 80 percent of its adult size. In this critical period, any degree of malnutrition was thought to halt the normal development of the brain and thereby to inflict severe, lasting damage.
In the 1970s research by David A Levitsky and Richard H. Barnes of Cornell University helped to clarify how malnutrition might hinder cognitive development in ways other than injuring the brain. Levitsky and Barnes studied rodents to examine the effects of malnutrition. Levitsky concluded that the malnourished animals performed less well on tests of mental ability, such as maze running, not because they suffered brain damage but mostly because lacking energy, they essentially withdrew from contact with their peers and the objects in their environment. In addition, mothers coddled the less mobile infants, furthering hindering their growth and independence. By extrapolation, the findings implied the cognitive disability in undernourished children might stem in part from a reduced interaction with other people and there surroundings.
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