Investing in the Early Years

In The Philosophical Baby, Alison Gopnik challenges the common arguments about investing in the early years:

"When policy makers make arguments for early intervention, for universal high-quality preschool and medical care, or for programs such as Head Start and the Abecedarian Project, they think in terms of the direct causal effects of early experience on later life.  And, indeed, when I talk about these programs to journalists and policy makers I bring out the statistics about changing the odds, about increasing worker productivity and decreased prison bills.  Like everyone else I use the language of current investment and future returns of children as a present means to a future end.

"But surely there is something a little crazy about thinking that children should be healthy so that adults will be more productive, or that children should be happy so that adults will be less violent.  You would think that if there is anything in the world that we can all agree on is an unequivocal good, a moral absolute, an end in itself, it is the happiness and health of children.  You would think everyone would agree that a sick, or miserable, or abused child is an unequivocal evil if anything is.

"And let's suppose we are thinking about the kinds of adults we would like to bring into the world.  Surely it is as important to have adults who go through life with the ineradicable gift of a happy childhood as it is to have adults who are a little smarter or richer or less neurotic."

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