She has good reason to ask. I am the purveyor of trips to the National Aquarium, swimming lessons, dance classes at the Peabody Preparatory and, best of all, summer camp at Hopkins. But the majority can turn into viable works of beauty and craftsmanship. They can also be cracked, disfigured, and worn away.
Collective neglect is a good way to turn a child's heart into a pebble.
Diminished ambition, untrammeled anger, and deviant behavior are not just the result of personal limitations but the product of environmental forces in whose wielding we are all implicated. I make that statement at considerable risk. Middle America is rapidly abandoning the belief that impoverished children are a shared responsibility. Increasingly, inner-city distress is being laid at the feet of men and women judged to be too stupid and too irresponsible to rear productive citizens. The finger points to bad parenting, not public indifference.