[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 47 (Tuesday, April 26, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: April 26, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
HEAD START AND EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT AMENDMENTS OF 1993
Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I am here today to discuss our Nation's
children and the people who care for them. Thursday, April 28, 1994, is
``take-your-daughter-to-work'' day. This is a day when parents are
encouraged to bring their daughters to the workplace, therefore
providing them with a view of the work opportunities available to them.
Many job positions, particularly professional positions, have been
historically viewed as ``men's work'' or ``women's work.'' Thursday is
therefore a day dedicated to demonstrating that employment positions
are no longer dependent upon one's gender. It is a day to show that
girls--as well as boys--should aspire to any job they desire. This
year, take-your-daughter-to-work day is expected to include the
participation of several million girls in not only the United States,
but also in Africa, Japan, Ireland, Britain, and Puerto Rico.
Additionally, some businesses, such as USA Today, are encouraging
visits from employees sons, as well as daughters. This will hopefully
lead to greater acceptance and understanding of all individuals in all
employment positions while providing young people with firsthand
knowledge about employment opportunities and responsibilities.
Mr. President, as well as actively combating gender discrimination in
the workplace, our Nation also faces the challenge of providing
adequate salaries for certain jobs. There are numerous difficulties in
attracting high quality people to work with young children,
particularly in Head Start and day care positions, because of the low
wages associated with these professions. For this reason, early
childhood professionals in North Dakota, including the North Dakota
Association for the Education of Young Children, recognized April 21,
1994, as national ``Worthy Wage Day''--a day designated to draw
attention to the low compensation received by child care professionals.
Early education of children is an investment with huge social and
economic returns. Since the 1960's, Head Start has been an important
part of this investment. Head Start has proven to be one of the most
successful Federal programs ever, distinguishing itself as an effective
and cost-efficient way to build a solid foundation for learning for
millions of American children.
I believe it is important to take action to ensure that this great
American success story can continue and meet the challenges of the
future.
For these reasons, Mr. President, I introduced the Head Start and
Early Childhood Development Amendments of 1993 (S. 1193) on July 1,
1993. I am proud that portions of my bill, including provisions to
upgrade Head Start employee benefits, were recently incorporated into
the Head Start reauthorization bill, which will soon be considered by
this body.
Head Start, however, is only one part of our continuing effort to
ensure the future success of our children. We must also focus on the
basic interaction between children and the people that care for them,
whether in Head Start or day care.
Over the years, we have gained a better understanding of the
development of the human brain. A recent New York Times article
explains the results of studies in neuroscience that began as early as
the 1960's. The experiments focused on the neural and cognitive
development of the very young and their developmental process. The
conclusion of these studies, not surprisingly, is that lack of
stimulation leads to lack of neural development. It is now widely
believed that newborns begin life with a profuse tangle of brain cells
and synapses--a massive cerebral short circuit. Lack of stimulation in
early life leads to a failure of synapses to connect. The Carnegie
Corp. of New York published a report last week, discussing the
relevance of these studies to children's development. If children do
not receive adequate and appropriate stimulation in their early years,
irreversible damage results, preventing them from developing their full
potential.
Neglecting children and neglecting appropriate child care retards the
mental development of our children.
We need to focus more energy on these issues because of the large
number of single parent families and the high percentage of women in
the work force. In my State of North Dakota, approximately 70 percent
of women with preschool-aged children are in the work force. We must
ensure that our children receive the care necessary for their full
development. We must ensure that we attract high quality, well-trained
people to the child care profession. The problem is that we do not pay
child care professionals very well. This Nation needs to develop a
benefits package, including retirement programs, to attract the best.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the April 17, 1994,
article from the New York Times regarding the importance of appropriate
care for children, especially very young children, be included in the
record immediately following my remarks.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Ideas and Trends; Building a Better Brain For Baby
(By George Johnson)
In a series of classic experiments beginning in the early
1960's, neuroscientists subjected kittens to all kinds of
strange childhoods. Some were raised with one eye sutured
shut or covered by an opaque contact lens. Others were reared
in a visual world consisting of nothing but vertical or
horizontal stripes.
Then, all of a sudden, the veils were lifted. Normalcy
prevailed. But from the point of view of the kittens, nothing
had really changed. Eyes deprived of light in those first
crucial days were now blind. Kittens raised in a vertical
world were unable to see horizontal lines. They might as well
have been asked to detect radio waves. For lack of
stimulation, the neurological wiring--the connections, called
synapses, that pass signals from neuron to neuron--had not
developed.
Not all was lost, however. If the blinders were removed
early enough, the brain would spring back from the
deprivation. In a matter of days, new synapses sprouted. The
blind eye would learn to see, the brain to comprehend
perpendicularity. But if the scientists waited too long, the
damage was irreversible. The window of development slammed
shut forever.
Use them or lose them. This lesson about synapses--long
known to neuroscientists--created a stir when it surfaced
last week in a report by the Carnegie Corporation of New York
about the plight of American children living in poverty.
Raising the frightening possibility that deprived infants
are left with permanently stunted brains, the group called
for more support for child care and preschool programs like
Head Start; it asked for more liberal policies on family
leave. Otherwise, the implication was, children were in
danger of ending up like the kittens, neurologically walled
off from all but a fraction of the world's informational
riches.
The vast, gray expense of neuroscientific literature is
full of studies that lend support to this grim possibility.
Over the years, scientists have shown that rats raised in
stimulating environments--a Coney Island of treadmills and
tunnels, with fellow rodents joining in the fun--seem to
develop a greater density of synapses--more connections--than
those raised in duller surroundings.
In fact, it is now widely believed that newborns begin life
with a profuse tangle of brain cells and synapses--a massive
cerebral short circuit. Then, through a process of neural
sculpting, the excess is pruned away. Neurons die, synapses
become disconnected. How this topiary work comes out seems to
depend on which circuitry is stimulated in the early years of
life.
The implication, apt to incite anxiety among even the most
attendant families, is that neglectful parents are guilty not
only of a sin of omission--not providing enough mental
stimulation--but of a sin of commission as well: fating their
children to confront the world with underdeveloped brains.
One can inflict permanent damage, it seems, without striking
a blow.
Philosophers usually blame Descartes for the deeply
ingrained assumption that there is an unbridgeable divide
between the physical and the psychological, between the brain
and the mind. We distinguish between hurting someone bodily
and hurting someone mentally. Terrible as it is,
psychological damage might be corrected, or so we like to
believe. But if parental neglect closes off forever the
sculpting of certain neural pathways, then the damage is as
irreversible as that inflicted by malnutrition, foot binding
or breakfasts of lead paint chips.
But before rushing off to buy another armload of videos or
the latest educational toys, parents might pause to consider
another study, also cited in the report, indicating that too
much stress in the early years can unleash hormonal poisons
that eat brain cells.
How do you distinguish between stimulation and stress? It
is no doubt stimulating in the extreme to grow up next to a
fire station or under the tracks of the El. In this regard,
the most dangerous urban neighborhoods provide a more
stimulating environment than placid suburbia. Can too much
stimulation--all those spinning, bright cribside objects and
mandatory nursery rhymes--result in its own kind of abuse?
These are the kinds of judgments that lie beyond the
laboratory studies. For all the efforts of neuroscience,
parenting seems likely to remain as much of an art as a
science.
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