What's Wrong with the Poor?: Psychiatry, Race, and the War on Poverty

Chapter Three: Targeting Deprivation: Early Enrichment and Community Action

76 Chapter Three Targeting Deprivation Early Enrichment and Community Action In 1967, journalist Fred Powledge published a short book describing the early intervention program run by psychologist Martin Deutsch at New York City’s Institute for Developmental Studies (IDS). This preschool program, which had opened its doors in 1962 to African American children in Harlem , later served as a model for Project Head Start. Funded by the AntiDefamation League, Powledge’s book offered a glowing description of the program down to the smallest details. A colorful ring-stacking toy, made of movable rings of wood of decreasing diameter on an upright base, was repainted a solid yellow, Powledge explained, as part of an approach the IDS termed “isolation of stimuli.” A toy that consisted of parts in both different sizes and different colors would have been overwhelming for these children; withalltheringsthesamecolor,thechildrencouldfocussolelyontheirsize.1 Why did the educators at the IDS believe that African American children from low-income homes would be overwhelmed by a multicolored toy? Well-meaning educators tried to provide these children, singularly described as “deprived,” with what they were seen to lack. TheIDS staffbelieved that these children had not been exposed to sufficient sensory stimulation in their homes and wanted to gradually introduce them to different colors, shapes, and sounds. Many child development experts and educators in the early 1960s shared this approach. Cultural deprivation theory provided the scientific basis for numerous earlyenrichmentprogramsinthelate 1950sandearly1960sacrosstheUnited States. Yet cultural deprivation theory, based on data from better-established formsofdeprivation,andparticularlymaternal,sensory,andnutritionaldeprivation , lacked any robust theoretical basis. Accordingly, the intervention programs focused almost exclusively on providing sensory stimulation and individual attention as a means of compensating for the perceived sensory and maternal deprivation experienced by children from low-income homes. Targeting Deprivation 77 Although many of these programs were short-lived and today are relatively obscure, at the time they were at the center of the heated debate on the role of compensatory education. Furthermore, these programs provided models for the federally funded Project Head Start. The best-known legacy of the War on Poverty, Head Start, which now enrolls close to a million children every year, has served more than twentyfive million children (and their families) since its inception in 1965. Head Start has endured decades of political turmoil to become a pillar of American culture, maintaining bipartisan support. Four programs have particularly been credited for providing the framework and impetus for the development of Head Start.2 The first was Bettye Caldwell and Julius Richmond’s early enrichment program at Syracuse (see chapter 1), which led Richmond, a pediatrician ,tobeappointedasthefirstdirectoroftheHeadStartprogram.The three other programs are discussed in this chapter: Susan Gray and Rupert Klaus’s Early Training Project at Peabody College in Nashville and the IDS program and one run by Mobilization for Youth (MFY), both in New York City. Although all of these programs ostensibly were designed to combat “cultural deprivation,” they in fact focused on preventing sensory, maternal, and nutritional deprivation. The MFY was a community action program designed to empower persons from minority ethnic backgrounds living in lowincome neighborhoods. Despite theMFY’s radical goals and structure, many of its interventions echoed the same language of deprivation evident in more conservativeprograms.WhenProjectHead Startwasestablishedin1965and in the program’s early years, its backers, politicians and child development experts alike, relied heavily on deprivation theory in articulating its scientific rationale and in countering the severe criticisms of the program. The Early Training Project The Early Training Project, an intervention program for disadvantaged preschool children, was established by Nashville psychologists Susan Gray and Rupert Klaus in 1959. Funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), this program targeted low-income children in Murfreesboro, a town south of Nashville with a population of approximately twenty-five thousand, including many low-income African American families. The intervention , designed to offset “the progressive retardation in cognitive developmentandschoolachievementthatcharacterizestheculturallydeprived child,” was carried out solely on African American children, with whom the Targeting Deprivation 78 authors believed the chances of success would be greater, though they did not elaborate why.3 The program consisted of two components. The first was an intensive ten-week summer enrichment program that provided “typical” preschool educational experiences for low-income children, such as learning to name colors or taking turns playing with a toy. The second component consisted of weekly home sessions with a “specially trained home visitor” who would work with the children’s mothers.4...