The Have’s and the Have Nots

David Brooks was a featured speaker at the United Way’s Annual Leadership Conference in Denver last Thursday.  The New York Times columnist and author was a great choice to address the 1700 United Way staff and volunteers from across the country as he has some fascinating observations about the future of children in America.

For me, his remarks not only underscored the critical importance of our campaign with United Way of America on early childhood learning, it created a context and sense of urgency for many of the Ad Council’s campaigns.

“As society becomes more fair, it becomes less fair” Brooks posited.  We all wrinkled our brows at that.  But he explained that as access to education is made available to all children, the widening gap in parents who can build their children’s human capital give them an unfair advantage.  It generally families with college educated parents who know how to prepare their children to learn and know how to navigate them through academic institutions to earn a college education.

Low income parents without college degrees are much less likely to pass along verbal skills and frequent interaction with adults that builds social skills and confidence.  They are also not as able to guide their children in college prep curriculum and the application/financial aid process.  Something as simple as lost transcripts can derail a child’s higher education in families that have no clue how to go about finding them.

Of the many statistics Brooks quoted, two framed the condition in our country particularly well:

Household income greatly influences children’s rate of college graduation.  Households earning $96,000/year have children with a 1 in 2 graduation rate.  At $50,000/year the rate is 1 in 10 and at $36,000/year the rate is 1 in 17. 20% of the U.S. population has 85% of our country’s wealth.  The bottom 60% of our population has 4% of our country’s wealth.

My heart breaks for the millions of parents who want their children to have a better life than they have but lack the knowledge to pass along the skills needed to navigate their way to an education that allows them to compete in our information based workforce.  Brooks’ speech wove a thread through many, many Ad Council campaigns from early childhood development, importance of math and science, high school drop-out prevention, teacher recruitment and two more in development college access and invention and creativity.

Can we use the power of communications to mentor these parents and kids?  Sure we can.  The only question is how many can we touch?

Excuse me, I’ve got to get back to work!