Research
“Increasing productivity in itself does not mean greater emphasis on social welfare concerns” (Dolgoff & Feldstein, 2003, p. 349).
“What is problematic from a policy perspective is the sporadic communication among researchers, service providers, and government officials who make decisions about the allocation of limited resources to health, education, and human service systems that interact separately with the same children and families...What we need is a single integrated knowledge base of shared theories of change that can be applied across a wide range of policy and service sectors [which would] offer greater promise for productive collaboration than the simple call to improve communication among agencies and individuals who are guided by diverse practices and disconnected historical precedents” (Shonkoff, 2012 p. 16).
“While we teach knowledge, we are losing that teaching which is the most important one for human development: the teaching which can only be given by the simple presence of a mature, loving person... This tradition is not primarily based on the transmission of certain kinds of knowledge, but of certain kinds of human traits. If the coming generations will not see these traits anymore, a five- thousand-year-old culture will break down, even if its knowledge is transmitted and further developed.” (Fromm, 1956, p. 108). This bifurcation in the transmittal of “knowledge” can lead and has often led to a new way of “educating” young children where “the refractionating of the young child seen in the current emphasis on cognitive and literacy development is to the neglect of social- emotional development” (Aber et. al, 2007, p. 24).
“Economists just assume that people show up dressed and ready to play in the free market, and in fact there’s a whole lot of work that goes on to make that possible...When the state gets involved in social welfare, we have disrupted the relationships—a profound anti-social act. If you look at many of our social programs, they have the actual desire to disrupt the relationships” (Morse, 2010, p. 3).
Ultimately, “when we invest in children and families, the next generation will pay that back through a lifetime of productivity and responsible citizenship” (Center on the Developing Child, 2007). However, “to sell [taxpayers] on supporting the children’s cause requires a perspective that...(a) our knowledge about child development [can] advance the nation's human capital and ensure the ongoing viability of its democratic institutions and (b) our knowledge [can] contribute to nurturing, protecting, and ensuring the health and well-being of all young children as an important objective in its own right. The first agenda speaks to society's economic, political, and social interests...linking the care and protection of the young to the nation's future productivity. The second agenda speaks to society's moral and ethical values focusing attention on the quality of life. (Aber et. al. 2007, p. 24) thriving “is a developmental concept that denotes a healthy change process linking a youth with an adulthood status enabling society to be populated by healthy individuals oriented to integratively serve self and civil society”(Lerner, Brentano, Dowling, & Anderson, 2002, p. 22).
“Only persons can construct moral or just communities, and central to such construction is moral character, what the community members are as moral persons. Thus, we have convincing reasons for giving priority to moral character and its formation over particular choices and actions in relation to both individuals and communities... In a similar way, one may refer to the moral character of a family or neighborhood or even a society or political community. Thus to speak of [American] character does make sense, since we as a nation have in common many values, such as a commitment to democracy, the equality of all, the consequent requirement of justice and fairness as well as other values and virtues. “(Cosgrave, 2006, p. 133)
People capable of love under the present system, are necessarily the exceptions; love is by necessity a marginal phenomenon in present-day Western society...those who are seriously concerned with love as the only rational answer to the problem of human existence must, then, arrive at the conclusion that radical changes in our social structure are necessary, if love is to become a social and not a highly individualistic, marginal phenomenon....[and]] if man is able to love...the economic machine must serve him, rather than he serve it. He must be able to share experience, to share work, rather than at best, share in profits. Society must be organized in a way that man’s social, loving nature is not separated from his social existence but becomes one with it. (Fromm, 1956, p. 122)
As Massingale (2007) has eloquently stated, “we humans create social divisions and injustice. They do not have to be; they are neither natural nor fated. What humans break, divide, and separate we can also heal, unite, and restore” (p. 162). Armstrong (2009, July) echoes this sentiment, stating that “when people of all different persuasions come together working side by side for a common goal, differences melt away...we learn amity and we learn to live together and to get to know one another...and together with all our expertise, we can change the world.”