By Melanie Blow
If New York State plans to, as Cuomo put it, “reimagine schools,” we should first reacquaint ourselves with their role outside of education.
Many teachers perform a Sisyphean task of undoing the effects of the childhood trauma that two-thirds of children suffer at home. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention demonstrated that 10 childhood traumas change the way a young body and mind develop. These traumas include any form of abuse or neglect, witnessing domestic violence or having a parent suffering from severe mental illness or addiction. They predispose children to a lifetime of poor physical, mental, emotional and even financial health. ACEs are prevalent, over two-thirds of study participants had experienced at least one. More than 10% had experienced six or more; a score so high it statistically shortens someone’s life by 20 years.
What helps children who have experienced ACEs? The answer is complicated, but two critical pieces are preventing further abuse and experiencing healthy relationships. Today, teachers make a significant percentage of reports to the state’s central child abuse hot line. For many students, teachers are one of the few stable, healthy relationships in their lives. New York’s children will not benefit from improved education if we forget the critical role teachers play in mitigating childhood trauma.
Preventing ACEs is a better option for children, schools and society at large. The single biggest ACE prevention tool is a group of programs called Maternal Home Visiting programs. These programs help pregnant or new mothers successfully meet the challenges of parenting, improve their own emotional and financial health and prevent their children from getting ACEs. They save children’s futures, they save taxpayer dollars, and they are available to fewer than 5 percent of eligible parents.
If we are to reimagine education in New York, we need to imagine childhoods without abuse and preventable trauma. We need to build a society that helps parents break the cycles of trauma, abuse, and poverty. That will leave us free to imagine children entering school with bodies and minds primed for learning. It will free us to imagine a society with significantly less addiction, mental illness and crime, and the societal and financial costs associated with them. Until we are willing to do that, current discussions about increasing remote learning need to weigh the effects this change will have on children.
But as we are using this crisis to reimagine a better future, we owe it to children to not just imagine, but invest in a future where we all benefit.
Melanie Blow is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and an advocate who works with the Stop Abuse Campaign.
