Where have the children gone?

This is July, but I have to bring up a classic Christmas story.

Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol was published in 1843. Victorian England was a time of great technological change; the Industrial Revolution was in full swing. Unfortunately, it was also a time of great disparity between the social classes. The rich were very rich and the poor were very poor. Children were victims of this more than most.

There is a scene included in some (but not all) of the movie versions of A Christmas Carol that puts the welfare of children into sharp focus and also ties to a challenge we still face today.

"Are they yours?"

At the end of Ebenezer Scrooge’s time with the Spirit of Christmas Present, he sees a little girl and a little boy under the Spirit’s robes. They are bone thin, dirty, and “wolfish” to use Dickens’ own word.

Scrooge asks whose children they are. “They are Man’s,” answers the Spirit. “This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom...”

The Spirit’s message is clear. A society is measured by how it cares for its most vulnerable members, expressing Dickens’ hope for economic progress.?

Want is temporary, and while it can be severe, even dangerous if prolonged, there is nothing about it that has to prevent someone from elevating their status in life. Ignorance on the other hand… that is a social sickness to be feared.

Education is the Answer

To Dickens, education was the answer to all of the ills he saw in the world and highlighted in his writing; its importance could be felt at all levels of the class structure. Seeing poor people as lazy or morally weak made wealthy people just as ignorant as the illiterate poor and working classes they criticized.

Which brings us to today - and to this week’s episode of Dial P for Procurement.

We can think about those dirty, starving children under the Spirit of Christmas Present’s robes as artifacts of a time gone by. They don’t have names or parents, and we don’t know how their stories ended. For all we know, they only existed long enough to appear to Scrooge and then vanished with the last hours of that fateful Christmas.?

We are modern. We have digital transformation, iphones, cappuccino machines, and indoor plumbing. Our homes are clean. Our children receive good nutrition and go to school. They are loved and clothed and will grow up to walk in our footsteps.

Or will they?

Public School Education as Corporate Social Responsibility

In this week’s episode of Dial P, I make the case that corporate social responsibility and public K-12 education must go hand in hand.

Pandemic-related learning loss has put children behind in core areas like math and reading. It will affect their careers and lifetime earnings and reduce future potential corporate revenue.

This learning loss disproportionately impacts working class communities and communities of color, erasing the significant gains made in recent decades and jeopardizing the vision of workforce diversity.

For some children, that is not even the worst case scenario.?A staggering number of children disappeared from school rosters during and after the shutdowns.?

Stanford University and the Associated Press recently found that K-12 public-school enrollment declined by 1.2 million students between 2020 and 2022. Those losses are predominantly associated with elementary school children.

We know where some of them went. Two-thirds went to private schools, started homeschooling, or simply moved without updating local records. But that still leaves hundreds of thousands of children that are missing from the public educational system. According to the AP, approximately 230,000 are missing nationwide.?

As concerned as we may be about learning loss, child loss is worse. Children who have not been in school since 2020 are at a severe disadvantage, academically and socially. They may never catch up, creating a burden that they will carry for their whole lives and robbing communities and companies of their valuable contributions and active participation.

Will we allow ignorance to persist?

“This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy…”

If we allow ignorance to persist, for any reason, we have to own that these are our children. “They are Man’s.” They are not sad but somehow charming figures from another time. They live in our cities and neighborhoods; they are missing from our school districts.?

They deserve better - as do all of the students affected by the pandemic. Companies with CSR programs have an obligation to take action, even if it is in self interest.

To learn more about the connection between COVID learning loss and corporate talent challenges, read the full article and listen to this week’s episode of Dial P for Procurement:?

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