our Founding Story
“Alone, there isn't much we can do, but if we stand together, there's an immense amount that we can do.”
- Joan Almon, Co-founder, Alliance for Childhood
In February 1999 at Sunbridge College, Spring Valley, NY, in a meeting sponsored by The Center for the Study of the Spiritual Foundations of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University and funded by the Fetzer Institute, nearly 30 teachers, medical professionals, university professors, child advocates, and parents agreed to join together and boldly take up concerns and issues affecting the lives of children throughout the world. They would work together as partners, they decided, in forging a broad new international coalition to challenge the rush to end childhood.
The new partnership, called the Alliance for Childhood, is open to all who value childhood, in its fullest sense, as the human potential to grow in wisdom and love. This potential is every child's sacred birthright, suggested Michaela Glöckler, a pediatrician and author of A Guide to Child Health. But it's also a capacity shared by human beings of all ages, she added.
And ultimately, keeping this ideal of childhood alive is essential to a healthy human future, the group agreed.
"What we share is a common reverence for the life of the child," said Kate Moody, formerly executive director of the Open Gates Dyslexia Program at the University of Texas Medical Branch of Galveston.
Christopher Clouder, chair of the International Council of Steiner/Waldorf Schools, echoed that idea, adding that adults' respect for childhood ultimately reflects a respect for themselves. Clouder has developed Alliancefor Childhood work in the U.K. and Europe-wide work with the European Parliament in Brussels.
"There are qualities of childhood," Clouder explained, "such as imagination, creativity, and a sense of play and wonder, that human beings should never outgrow or suppress. But it's these very qualities that are currently endangered at very young ages."
The founding partners discussed the toxic mix of cultural, economic, and environmental transformations that are harming children around the world. One such threat to healthy childhood, many suggested at the meeting, is the overexposure of children to television, computers, and other electronic media. These tend to overwhelm their developing nervous systems, and to force them to deal with violence, sexuality, and other themes that even many adults find challenging. They also blunt the very powers of creativity and imagination - the ability, for example, to create new images in one's own mind - upon which future progress in science, technology, business and the arts depends.
The current focus on educational technologies is distracting schools, teachers, and parents from meeting students' real needs, added Lowell Monke, who was an award-winning teacher of advanced computer technology for the Des Moines Public Schools. Adults, he said, now concentrate on buying children ever more powerful tools at ever younger ages. Instead, they should be encouraging children to develop their own powers - especially the inner resources and human capacities they need to relate to, and care about, a troubled world.
"Our external tools are being substituted in all kinds of ways for the inner development of our youth, and not just our youth, of all of us," Monke added.
The group also pointed to documented increases in children's health problems, such as depression, violence against and by children, obesity, attention deficit disorder, and other learning disabilities. John D. Young, a physician and former head of the Laboratory of Molecular Immunology and Cell Biology at Rockefeller University, noted an unprecedented rate of chronic diseases among children in Asia, such as allergies and cancer. Young questioned whether this might be related to the sedentary lifestyles of an increasing number of children, which can block the expression of children's natural energies. Other environmental factors, such as pollution and stress, should also be considered, he added.
"It's clear to me that many chronic diseases should not happen in childhood, but we see them more and more," Young added.
Others expressed concern that many children suffer from too little time and attention from caring adults, too early an emphasis on intense academics, and from adults' obsession with quantitative tests of the intellectual abilities and achievements of young children at the expense of other aspects of development. The latter two are counterproductive, mechanistic responses to the real school issue, suggested some members of the group. Educational problems are predictable, they said, when a culture treats its children as harshly as does ours.
John Taylor Gatto, former Teacher of the Year in New York, added that the current mechanistic approach to education is shortsighted. Creative responses to human mistakes, he argued, historically have been a major source of unexpected insights and experiential learning. Far from pressuring young children not to fail, he suggested, we should be encouraging them to value trial and error as a font of human wisdom.
"We're not machines," Gatto added. "So inadequacies and mistakes are to be desired. This is our birthright."
And Bettye Caldwell, former president of the National Association for the Education of Young Children and a leader in founding Head Start, put it this way: "What's really missing in American education is a certain gentleness."
Caldwell, professor of pediatrics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, called for the Alliance to act as a "community of conscience," working together to make the unmet needs of children a major social and political issue.
Children in many nations today also face even more extreme stresses: civil and international wars that destroy homes and divide families, stubbornly high rates of poverty, and the loss of parents from AIDS. Even in affluent America, about one in five children still grows up poor and an even higher number, rich and poor, suffer from a hurried, over-organized lifestyle.
The damaging impacts of so many stresses on the young are being documented by researchers and noted by parents and teachers. The clear conclusion: However inconvenient for adults in a hurry, children are still in need of the time and space to grow at their own pace. In support of that goal, the new group agreed that each partner will continue his or her own ongoing efforts in support of children, but may now work in the name of the Alliance as well. Each partner will be able to individually initiate new efforts, in consultation with project coordinators, or to join together with other partners in the Alliance to serve on join projects.
The coalition will also seek out other like-minded individuals and groups to invite to become partners in the new Alliance. Those attending the Sunbridge meeting described the new group as a "soul alliance," which will be as decentralized as possible. Its shared commitment to the preservation of childhood will act as a kind of inner "head" quarters and "heart" quarters. The partners agreed to create as little organizational bureaucracy as possible. Each partner will be free to contribute in his or her own way to the shared goal of practical action on the problems that threaten childhood.
The founding partners of the Alliance, most seasoned professionals in their 40s or 50s, ended the two-day meeting with an unusually playful exercise of their own. Standing at a blackboard with chalk at the ready, Joan Almon issued a challenge to the rest of the group: "What exactly is it that we want to protect for childhood?"
There was a brief silence. Then, Barry Sanders, grey-bearded professor of English and the History of Ideas at Pitzer College, mediaevalist, and author of the provocative book, A is for Ox: Violence, Electronic Media, and the Silencing of the Written Word, bravely plunged into the lull with a simple but powerful trio of ideals.
"Joy, and love, and freedom!" Sanders sang out.
Marilyn Benoit, psychiatrist, secretary of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Washington lobbyist for children's causes, was right behind him, putting her own idealism on the line.
"A sense of wonder," Benoit volunteered.
From there, the group was inspired. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to share their own high aspirations for the best that childhood can offer. What followed was a wonderful, unexpected envisioning of the kind of paradise that the child in each of us longs for - and deserves. The rights of children to grow at their own pace, to live intimately with the rest of the natural world, to make mistakes, and to have their special physical, cognitive, and emotional needs met - for their own sakes, as individuals, and for the sake of a healthy human future - all ended up on the long list of ideals that will guide the partners in their work together for the Alliance.
A short break followed. When the group came back together, Almon, inspired herself, shared with everyone an impromptu poetic version of the list which she named "Childhood". And everyone present pledged to contribute in some way to the new group's work in support of childhood.
At the end of the two-day meeting of the full Alliance, a smaller group met to consider one of the partners' first joint projects: how to respond to the growing emphasis on computers in preschool and elementary education.
As a task force, they decided to put together a package of supporting materials that will demonstrate why the emphasis on computers in educating young children is inappropriate. The package will include quotes and articles that have already been published, as well as a clear, well-researched statement about healthy child development, the hazards that computers pose to such development, and alternative technologies that parents and schools can choose to nurture children in more age-appropriate ways. The latter include, for example, play, artistic activities, gardening, nature exploration, storytelling, and the low-tech power of a library card.
Once the package is ready, the task force hopes to publicize it broadly, among US policymakers, healthcare professionals, parents, teachers, and school administrators. Writers in the group also agreed to try to alert the public to the issue by submitting articles and editorials to a variety of publications.
The February meeting was sponsored by the Center for the Spiritual Foundations of Education at Teachers College of Columbia University, under a grant from the Fetzer Institute, and by Sunbridge College. Joan Almon also helped to organize and moderate the meeting, which marked the birth of the Alliance for Childhood.
FOUNDING PARTNERS
Samella Abdullah, Ph.D., M.S.W.
Psychotherapist and Educator
Former President of the Association of Black Psychologists
Tallahassee, Florida
Joan Almon
Director, U.S. Alliance for Childhood
Former Co-Chair, Waldorf Early Childhood Association of North America
College Park, Maryland
Marilyn Benoit, M.D.
Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Howard University Hospital
Past President, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Washington, D.C.
Chet Bowers, Ph.D.
Center for Environmental Studies, University of Oregon
Author, Educating for Eco-Justice and Community and Let Them Eat Data: How Computers Affect Education, Cultural Diversity, and The Prospects of Ecological Sustainability
Eugene, Oregon
Stuart Brown, M.D.
Founder and Director, The National Institute for Play
Carmel Valley, California
Bettye Caldwell, Ph.D.
Professor of Pediatrics, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
Former President, National Association for the Education of Young Children
Little Rock, Arkansas
Raffi Cavoukian, C.M.
Singer, Author, Founder & Chair: Centre for Child Honouring
Salt Spring Island, BC, Canada
Christopher Clouder
Chair, European Council of Steiner Waldorf Schools
East Sussex, England
Colleen Cordes
Executive Director, Psychologists for Social Responsibility
Washington, D.C.
William Crain
Professor of Psychology, City College of New York
Author, Reclaiming Childhood: Letting Children Be Children in Our Achievement-Oriented Society
New York, New York
O. Fred Donaldson
International Play Specialist and Developer of "Original Play" with children, adults, and wild animals
Stockholm, Sweden
David Elkind, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus of Child Development, Tufts University
Medford, Massachusetts
Virginia Flynn
Waldorf Elementary School Teacher (retired) and Consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
John Taylor Gatto
Author, Dumbing Us Down;
Speaker, Odysseus Group
Former Teacher of the Year, New York City and New York State
New York, New York
Michaela Gloeckler, M.D.
Pediatrician
Co-author, A Child's Guide to Health
Dornach, Switzerland
Mayu Gonzales, M.D.
Chief Psychiatrist and Director of Mental Health Services, New York Foundling Hospital
New York, New York
Elizabeth Goodenough, Ph.D.
University of Michigan
Editor, Secret Spaces of Childhood and originator of PBS documentary Where Do the Children Play?
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Joan Dye Gussow, M.S.
Rose Professor Emeritus of Nutrition and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
Author, Chicken Little, Tomato Sauce and Agriculture: Who Will Produce Tomorrow's Food?
Piermont, New York
Jane Healy, Ph.D.
Educational Psychologist and Educator
Author, Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children's Minds -- and What We Can Do About It
Vail, Colorado
Susan Howard
Chair, Waldorf Early Childhood Association of North America
Amherst, Massachusetts
Philip Incao, M.D.
Primary Care Physician
Denver, Colorado
Sally Jenkinson
Waldorf Early Childhood Educator
Author, The Genius of Play
Chesham Bucks, England
Gerald Karnow, M.D.
Physician, The Fellowship Community
Spring Valley, New York
Edgar Klugman, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, Wheelock College
Editor, Play, Policy and Practice
Boston, Massachusetts
Alfie Kohn
Author, The Schools Our Children Deserve; The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools, and other books on education and human behavior
Belmont, Massachusetts
Diane Levin, Ph.D.
Professor of education, Wheelock College
Author, Remote Control Childhood
Boston, Massachusetts
Larry and Jane Levine
Co-founders, Kids Can Make a Difference
Kittery, Maine
David Ludwig, M.D., Ph.D.
Director, Obesity Program, Children's Hospital
Boston, Massachusetts
Deborah W. Meier
Senior Scholar, New York University
Founder, Central Park East Schools
New York, New York
Edward Miller
Strategic Communications Consultant
Former editor, Harvard Education Letter
Wellfleet, Massachusetts
Marita Moll
Head, Research and Technology, Canadian Teachers' Federation
Researcher, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
Editor, Tech High: Globalization and the Future of Canadian Education
Ottowa, Ontario
Lowell Monke
Associate Professor of Education, Wittenberg University
Co-author, Breaking Down the Digital Walls: Learning to Teach in a Post-Modem World
Springfield, Ohio
Arline Monks
Coordinator, Institute for Public School Teachers
Rudolf Steiner College
Fair Oaks, California
Kate Moody, Ed.D.
Author, Growing Up on Television
Larchmont, New York
Thomas Moore
Psychologist
Author, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life
Amherst, New Hampshire
Douglas Noble, Ph.D.
Researcher on the History of Educational Technologies
Author, The Classroom Arsenal: Military Research, Information Technology, and Public Education
Rochester, New York
Mimi Noorani
Former Coordinator, National TV Turnoff Week
TV-Free America
Greenbelt, Maryland
Chloe O'Gara, Ed.D.
Director of Education, Save the Children
Washington, D.C.
Sharna Olfman, Ph.D.
Department of Humanities and Human Sciences, Point Park College
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
David W. Orr, Ph.D.
Chair, Department of Environmental Studies, Oberlin College
Author, Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect
Oberlin, Ohio
Kim Payne
Author, The Games Children Play
Researcher, ADD/ADHD
Harlemville, New York
Barry Sanders
Professor of English and History of Ideas, Pitzer College
Author, A is for Ox: Violence, Electronic Media, and the Silencing of the Written Word
Claremont, California
Richard Sclove, Ph.D., M.S.
Author, Democracy and Technology
Founder and Advisory Board Member of the Loka Institute
Amherst, Massachusetts
Douglas Sloan
Professor Emeritus of History and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
Harlemville, New York
Steve Talbott
Editor, NetFuture: Technology and Human Responsibility (online newsletter)
Author, The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst
Ghent, New York
Betsy Taylor
Founder and Former Executive Director, Center for a New American Dream
Takoma Park, Maryland
Robert Welker, Ph.D.
Director, Wittenberg Teacher Institute, Wittenberg University
Springfield, Ohio
Langdon Winner, Ph.D.
Thomas Phelan Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Author, Confronting the Culture of Disrespect
Troy, New York
John D. Young, M.D., Ph.D.
Children's Recitation Program
Former director, Laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Rockefeller University
Livingston, New Jersey
Arthur Zajonc, Ph.D.
Professor of Physics, Amherst College
Author, Catching the Light: The Entwined History of Light and Mind
Amherst, Massachusetts
Robin Vircsik
Founder United Kindergarten Teachers of Las Vegas
Las Vegas, Nevada