The latest national security threat? Inadequate early childhood education
Two months ago, I wrote about our nation’s tendency to focus solely on imminent crises while failing to attend to future crises that could be prevented by acting now. The examples I used were child nutrition (specifically school lunches) and early childhood education.
Two weeks ago, Mission: Readiness–a nonpartisan, nonprofit, national security organization of more than 80 retired generals, admirals, and other senior military leaders–released a report explaining that 75% of young Americans (ages 17-24) are unfit for military service. According to the group’s press release, this “threat to America’s national security” has come about because so many young people ”fail to graduate high school, have a criminal record, or are physically unfit.”
The proposed solution from our nation’s former military strategists and battlefield commanders?
“[A] top national and state priority must be to increase the number of children served by early education. However, as crucial as it is to increase access, it is equally important to deliver high-quality programs. The research is clear that only high-quality programs deliver strong results…. If members of Congress, governors, and state legislators act now to ramp up both the quantity and quality of early education programs, they can count on strong support from the retired generals and admirals of Mission: Readiness. America’s military leaders fully understand what is at stake. America can, and must, do a better job of preparing our children for a successful life with many options in adulthood, including a career in the military if they choose to serve. Increased investments in high-quality early education are essential for our national security.”
A quotation from Rear Admiral James Barnett, US Navy (Ret.) puts it more simply:
Our national security in the year 2030 is absolutely dependent upon what is going on in pre-kindergarten today.”
Why is this the case? One major factor is brain development, which the report explains as follows:
Ninety percent of a person’s adult brain weight is achieved by age five. According to the Institute of Medicine book From Neurons to Neighborhoods, brain scans and neuroscience have now shown conclusively that the best time to influence a child’s trajectory in life is during the child’s earliest years when the architecture of the brain is literally under construction. Changes in neurons, connections and structures in the brain continue throughout life, but the most important changes come during the 0-5 years: ‘What happens during the first months and years of life matters a lot, not because this period of development provides an indelible blueprint for adult well-being, but because it sets either a sturdy or fragile stage for what follows.’”
The report also explains that “Quality early education increases graduation rates and cuts crime…. Over 40 years of research on early education programs has found they successfully address both problems.” (The authors note that this report discusses only drop-out rates and crime, while future reports will discuss health issues.)
We know that funding early childhood initiatives is necessary for national defense, necessary for the nation’s economic health, and good for the general welfare of our nation’s children and families. We also know it is an investment that provides extraordinary returns on every dollar spent. Finally, we have a solid research base that shows us which types of programs work and how they should be implemented. This is one issue that, no matter one’s political or ideological leanings, everyone should be able to agree on. The federal and state governments need to work together, even in these tight economic times, to find the money to provide early childhood education for all children. I hope that in 2030 we don’t look back and regret failing to take action.
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This is interesting. I hadn’t thought about the implications of early childhood development on national security; I tend to think about these things in terms of how they impact individual development. But when you think about it in the aggregate, there are going to be alot of challenges ahead because of a general neglect of future generations. Food for thought.
Jessica – I am with you. I find it disappointing that citizens and state/federal leaders would need the threat of a weakened military to do something that has so many other benefits outside of national security. But it’s not surprising. For example, increased investment in U.S. public education–specifically in math and science–in the 1950s and 1960s was due mainly to the threat of Russian military supremacy after they launched Sputnik in 1957. And in “A Nation At Risk,” the famous 1983 report calling for drastic education reform, allusions to war are used in the second paragraph as a way to grab readers’ attention: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. We have even squandered the gains in student achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik challenge. Moreover, we have dismantled essential support systems which helped make those gains possible. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.” (The full report available at http://www.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/index.html.) The important thing for me, though, is that early childhood education is funded…no matter the reason.
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