David Brooks Promotes Agenda to Lift Children out of Poverty

David Brooks’ column urges President Obama to sketch out an agenda to help poor children reach the middle class including Turnaround for Children’s fortified environments. Here is an excerpt:

“Once they get to elementary school, children need to learn how to read and write. But that can’t happen in schools where 15 percent of the students are disruptive, where large numbers of students live with so much stress that it has stunted the development of the prefrontal cortexes, sent their cortisol levels surging, heightened their anxiety responses and generally made it hard for them to control themselves.

Therefore, we probably need more programs like Pamela Cantor’s Turnaround for Children, which works in schools to help teachers and administrators create “fortified environments,” in which overstressed children can receive counseling and treatment, in which the psychic traumas that go with poverty are recognized and addressed.”

To read David Brooks’ column in The New York Times click here.