Friday, May 27, 2005
Children and the American Dream
I just went to see “Return to Neverland,” a movie starring Johnny Depp as J.M. Barrie, the creator of the children’s classic, “Peter Pan.” Depp presents Barrie as a lonely dreamer, misunderstood by his chilly and socially ambitious wife. Barrie’s friendship with a young family he meets in a London park blossoms as he tells the sons marvelous stories of pirates and adventure. Their imaginative games together help Barrie break through writer’s block and he develops the plot of his whimsical play.
The movie reminds us how ideas about childhood have changed over time. It’s hard to recall now that Barrie’s play was originally performed for an adult audience, though it’s now shelved in libraries as children’s literature. It’s hard, too, to watch this version of Barrie’s relationship with the Llewellyn Davies boys and their yummy mummy, Kate Winslet, without a queasy expectation that some sexual subplot is about to be forced upon us. Particularly as the trial of that other Lost Boy, Michael Jackson, grinds to its tragic last act in today’s papers.
The literary critic Jacqueline Rose has argued that so-called children’s literature, like Peter Pan, often tells us more about adults and their fantasies than it does about children themselves. The same may be true of social policies and news reports, which evoke the figures of The Child Left Behind or the Urban Teen Mom to personify and focus cultural anxieties.
The very idea of childhood as a distinctive phase of life was invented sometime in seventeenth century Europe. Cultural traditions place different significances on the continuum of human changes from birth to death. Shakespeare, for instance, divides the life of Man into Seven Ages: from mewling and puking infant to lean and slippered Pantaloon, but says nothing about teens, tweens or empty-nesters. These divisions carry with them moral ideas: the Puritans saw the infant as liable to willful wickedness; Rousseau saw the child as naturally good, to be protected from culture’s corrupting forces.
Contemporary American culture seems to be in two minds about children: there’s a great split between what we know on the basis of science and what we want to believe about children’s lives. One source for current data about how children in St Joe County are faring from birth to age five is a report commissioned by the Community Foundation and United Way of St Joseph County, written by Sue Christenson and Ann Rosen. The report will be coming out soon in the public libraries.
The report lays out the contradictions in our attitude to children. On the one hand, we declare that No Child must be Left Behind, yet we know that in St Joe County, about 18% of children under five live below the poverty line. Half of African-American children under five and one third of Latino children under five live below poverty. We think all children should have the opportunity to achieve the American Dream, yet we know that economic disadvantage is correlated with lesser success in school.
Again, we know that the first years of life are crucial to children’s cognitive and emotional development, yet we do not require that all childcare workers be highly qualified. Indeed, 18 daycare centers and ministries in St Joe County lack a single teacher with a bachelor’s degree. We insist that children in day care centers be protected by a slew of licensing rules, but waive many of those rules for Hoosier children who happen to be at religiously-affiliated ministries. Children are precious and vulnerable, but we pay those who take care of children in our local neighbourhoods poverty wages.
Of course, now that we have this report, our community faces a challenge. Surely, every story for and about children should have a happy ending?
Clap your hands if you believe in fairies!
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About the series
Michiana Chronicles is a series of radio essays by Jonathan Nashel, Louise Collins, Joe Chaney, Jeanette Saddler Taylor, Jeff Nixa, April Lidinsky, and Ken Smith.
Michiana is the region of north-central Indiana and southern Michigan roughly centered on South Bend, Indiana.
Michiana Chronicles airs on Fridays at 7:35 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on WVPE (88.1 FM), the home of public radio in Elkhart / South Bend, Indiana.
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Recent pieces
Making Up on the South Shore -- As we’re approaching the Beverly Shores station I glance over and see the woman looking into a pocket mirror. Yes, you’re pretty, sister. Don’t worry about that. Then she reaches into her bag and pulls out a big pink tackle box, sets it on her lap and opens it up, revealing a whole assortment of little tubes and jars. She selects one tube, squirts some stuff onto her fingertips and starts rubbing it onto…her face. Whoa! What are you doing? By Jeff Nixa.
Time Travel in Paris -- I had studied maps of Paris and read French literature and the Parisian works of American expatriates like Stein, Hemingway, Baldwin, and Miller. I had fallen in love, of course, with my French teachers in high school and college. My prior romance with the language, art, stories, and landmarks animated the city. I remember a morning when the sun emerged and lit up the domes and towers across from where my friend and I stood on a right bank quay, and the world itself seemed like a pure gift, a fresh beginning. By Joe Chaney.
Celebrating Magna Charta Day -- Runnymede, the site of the signing of the Magna Charta, loomed right up there in my imagination with Stonehenge: a couple of historical sites that had captured my interest early on. I can still see surly, pimply-faced, bad King John in some old movie being strongly urged, that is coerced, into signing this document where he promised to behave: “The Lion in Winter,” I think. By Jeanette Saddler Taylor.
Life on the Default Setting -- That foam cup will still reside in the county landfill when our great grandchildren are driving their offspring in a nuclear-powered mini-van to gymnastics classes on the moon. "Will you look at those kids jump!" By then the landfill will be the tallest manmade feature in north-central Indiana, visible from earth orbit. Astronauts will steer their sleek ships by the neon glow of all our waste. By Ken Smith.
It’s a Long, Long, Road from May to December -- Over the years Kurt Weill’s music has inspired a legion of devotees who want to be a part of his creepy luster. Some fifty years after Weill’s death Lou Reed took a stab at getting in on this kind of cool. Now, Lou is just about as cool as there is too. In the 1960s he co-founded the rock band, The Velvet Underground, and as the story goes, only a couple of thousand copies of their first album were sold, but everyone who listened to it formed their own band. The man gives new meaning to having no vocal range, and yet conveys everything that needed to be said. By Jonathan Nashel.
Pomp and Happenstance -- Truly, the moments in our lives that really deserve a brass band and velvet robes and a basso profundo voice saying “Something BIG has happened here!” are most often happenstance, unexpected. Maybe you’ve had the experience of reading a novel or seeing a film that shifts you, profoundly, to another axis – that peoples your interior with ideas or characters that become guides – or cautionary figures – for the rest of your life. Or maybe you’ve had a conversation with someone that suddenly made your world slide sideways as you questioned your faith – or gained a new sense of it. Those are moments that warrant pomp and circumstance, but they often pass quietly, despite their transformative legacy. By April Lidinsky.
A Kid and a Rock -- But every night I come home, the kid is hammering on the rock. He’s like a little John Henry. Small stones dislodged and fell to the dirt but then larger ones emerged, and eventually the worst one of all: a granite field stone the size of a pumpkin embedded in there till the end of the world. “This is hard,” he said. “Yeah, it is,” I said, watching the woman glare at me from hell. I left town for vacation. Two weeks. I was carrying an armload of sleeping bags back around the house when I stopped. The concrete monster was gone. Just a circle of rock dust in its place, littered with stones and in the center, the big granite pumpkin. I smiled. He did it. Dang. I’m going to go hug that kid. Buy them both a pizza or something. By Jeff Nixa.
True to Type -- We talk about what we are reading, what we have read, what we’ve read about reading (God bless the Sunday New York Times Book Review section!) and what we are planning to read next. Standing in front of the bookcase, my daughter-in-law, Nancy, and I were having one of those discussions. I think that she was holding Bobbie Ann Mason’s Clear Springs; she flipped to the back and saw the page that tells which font was used in printing the book and a bit of history about that font. Nancy said, “I can’t believe that they waste a page putting that in there. Nobody cares about that!” Danger! A big, evil-mother-in-law-trap just waiting to ensnare me there! Recognizing it in time, I pulled the shreds of my seldom-worn garment of tact around myself and did not blurt out, “Are you nuts! That’s a great thing! I love it when they put that in! It’s like frosting on a cookie; it makes it ever so much better!” By Jeanette Saddler Taylor.
Jump Ball at the Hoosier Primary -- I can’t believe it! At long last, Indiana matters during the national campaign season. We’re in the news every day. We Hoosiers have been crafty, too, not tipping our hand as to whom we favor. We’ve made Indiana a real battleground state, forcing the candidates to pour ad dollars into our communities in a despairing sort of Vegas binge. Here in the second congressional district, we’re a battleground within a battleground. And permit me to announce loudly that I’m an “undecided voter.” You guessed it: a battleground within a battleground within a battleground, the center of a political universe in which not knowing what you want makes you royalty. By Joe Chaney.
Doing Algebra -- I’m doing quite a bit of algebra these days, helping our young mathematician solve homework problems. I last took algebra from Mr. Webb way back in the year 19-mumble-mumble, when President Nixon was still lovingly adding names to his enemies list. My strongest memory from Mr. Webb’s class was that he never learned his students’ names. He called everyone Babe. No matter who you were, he’d say, “Babe, put the next problem on the board. Thanks, Babe.” But he must have been a pretty good teacher, because after a quick refresher I can solve a basic problem. And so for the moment I still have a role to play in our teen’s life. By Ken Smith.
Skirting the Issue -- Now, Land’s End and other sensible clothiers exploit this swimsuit anxiety brilliantly to play on both the intelligence and self-loathing of grown-up women. For one thing, you practically have to have your Ph.D. in Swimsuit-ology to wade through the thick catalogues hitting mailboxes now, with bold headlines promising “Flattering Solutions” – implying every body is a problem. In fact, you can shop by “anxiety zones,” choosing which body part you think most needs to be slimmed, supported, disguised, and, somehow, covered, all while revealing more than most of us care to face in full-length mirrors, fully clothed. By April Lidinsky.
Baby, It’s Cold Inside -- After you see these photos you will probably wonder what we can do to prevent every single last iceberg from melting away and becoming history. Here, I confess, I have no idea. I’ve heard it all before: lower carbon footprints, drive hybrids, recycle with abandon, hate the oil companies, love to read in the dark, you name it. And you know what: none of this is going to bring back these icebergs or grow new ones or do anything to stop our relentless destruction of the earth, let alone quell the naysayers on global warming. I recently heard on NPR that an iceberg the size of Connecticut just broke apart and is melting away. Now, I’ve been in Connecticut many times and I still can’t wrap my head around this little fun fact. What can possibly be the size of a state? By Jonathan Nashel.
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