Summary of Geoffrey Canada’s Keynote Address
“Spare the Rod: Why Corporal Punishment Doesn’t Work and What Does”
Thank you. Good morning everybody. I’m really excited to be here in Philadelphia—it’s also one of my adopted cities. What John [Rich] did not mention is that I am also a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. I have been coming here for 25 years or more to this wonderful city, and it’s one of those cities I am very concerned about, and as you all know who are here, it has many challenges.
It’s been an exciting year. I have done “60 Minutes” two times, which was very exciting. I have to tell you something about “60 Minutes.” I was raised watching “60 Minutes.” In the 1960s, when social justice was a big movement, you could see something on “60 Minutes.” Some scoundrel would come on and try to convince you that Mike Wallace was really a good guy. Mike would whip out the photo of the guy, and I thought, “Why do these idiots go on “60 Minutes”—it’s the same format every week. And then they called me. (Laughs). The first time I did “60 Minutes” with Ed Bradley, I asked him, “If you know something, don’t let me go on for 15 minutes, just ask me!” In this world we can see how things are portrayed. The second time I did “60 Minutes,” it was with Anderson Cooper. It was about these two guys who were at war with each other. They would go on their roofs and shoot at each other, and there was a playground down below. The kids would play there. We would have a discussion and Anderson would say, “Great, let’s go film it.” I was thinking, Anderson has been to Afghanistan and Iraq, and I said, “God, please don’t let them kill Anderson.” He’s made it through war zones just fine; I didn’t want him to die in the neighborhood. So Anderson comes with me and this director says to me, “Thank you for saving our children through your programs,” and then says to Anderson, “Thank you. I love you.” He was more excited to see Anderson Cooper than to see me.
If you have a message for America, I believe that “60 Minutes” is the place to give it. If you have a message to get out, there is one place better than “60 Minutes” or Anderson Cooper to get your message out (pause)...Oprah. I don’t really know about Oprah. This is how I found out about Oprah: I said to my family, I’m going to be on “60 Minutes.” Oh, you’re going to go to the White House, take a picture with the president and news correspondents. I told them I was going to be on Oprah, and they said, “You? You are gonna be on Oprah. Did you get us tickets?” I didn’t know you needed tickets. So I called to try to get tickets. And Oprah does the worst thing possible—she gives me 7 tickets. I can take my mom and my mother-in-law. Everyone in the family thinks they’re in the top 7. I can’t invite everyone. But it worked out and I had a good time on Oprah.
I have become convinced that if we continue doing what we have been doing in this country to our children, we are going to destroy our country. And some people say, “Oh that’s hyperbole.” No, I’m serious. I am absolutely stunned by what is happening to children in our country. I am amazed that people are not in absolute panic over the future of our nation. If you look at what has gone on over the past 30 to 40 years in our country... the message was not getting out. It was assumed that certain people would not get out of certain places. And living with the trauma and violence became the way of life. Instead of getting better, it got bigger and worse. It is becoming more evident today. People are pulling on these threads and trying to unravel what is going on in America. I was speaking with Marian [Wright Edelman] who was CDF [Children’s Defense Fund] head, and she became convinced that we were in a state of unparalleled crisis. She created a Black [Community] Crusade for Children which led me to create the Harlem Children Zone. Marian was looking at the numbers of children who were murdered in our country, and she said we were losing more kids in a year than all the lynching in the South, and nobody was paying any attention to it. Kids were killing each other in the cities. Whenever they have killings in White, suburban America, they call me. And they go on TV and they always say, “I never thought it would happen here.” Well, where did you think it was gonna happen? I’m still stunned that it would happen here. I don’t understand how we can think in America that it’s normal in other places, but we are stunned when it happens here. We recently created a paper that we call the Cradle to Prison Pipeline. One thing we guarantee our children is that they can have a place to go: jail. They can do something and we’ll lock them away for life. We will not guarantee them safety, or an education, but we will guarantee them a prison cell. We will pluck you up and put you in a place that takes you in, and this is disproportionate on Black and Latino children, that today we have 585,000 African Americans serving sentences in prison cells. While we are graduating fewer than 40 thousand black males in degrees each year. We know that 30 percent of them won’t be able to enroll because they are spending their lives in jail. Think about the impact of that. Just absolutely devastating. So we’re locking up all these African American men and Hispanic men. We lock up more people in this country. In this country we lock up more people per capita than any other place on the face of this earth. When we think about the rest of the world, when President Bush talks about the Evil Empire—North Korea doesn’t lock up near the number of people we do. What is it about America that we lock up so many of our citizens? It might have something to do with the way that we are treating our children. So I’m sitting here, looking at these statistics—over the weekend there have been black business people meeting, and seeing headlines about African Americans. For every dollar that Whites have, African Americans have 15 cents. The average net wealth of White Americans is $97,000 and for African Americans it’s $2,300. I look at these things and just go, “I don’t get this.” I think of African American women who raised children by themselves, back in the 1960s, their net value was $20. The men are in jail, the women have no money. It’s been going on for decades. So when I began to look at what’s going on in the country, it’s not just Black and Latino kids. They had this thing about the Moynihan Report, and I’ve always argued this. I unsuccessfully argued it by some of my friends who have argued for the data. When Moynihan did his report, he talked about unwed black kids, and people were calling it racist. Today it’s in the 70 percent range, and for White kids it’s 28. For Black families, it has continued to escalate. But it’s similar to the pattern observed by Moynihan years ago. We keep thinking it’s other people’s kids, but it’s our kids.
I’ve been to Scandinavia; they have the most sensible childrearing practices. They actually act like they like children over there. That’s the way for parents to raise their kids. Hmm, someone’s got to raise the kids, and someone’s got to help them. ‘Cause they keep having them, and they [kids] can’t take care of themselves. Other places, they don’t see the world that way. They think that we have to see all of our children succeed. So part of what we’re dealing with when we talk about beating children is how we view them, the importance we place on our kids. I went to Denmark—all the kids looked the same. We talked to the Danes, and they were like, “Those are our kids.” And they understand, there are only so many of them, and it’s the only way we’re gonna survive. We think, we can throw away some of these kids, and everything is gonna be fine. In the rest of the world they think all the children need to be successful.
So we wonder, “Why do people beat children? What do we believe about these kids?” Our children have become so unable to compete in today’s world. The military leaders of America recently published a report about America’s kids being unable to serve in the military—it’s the most amazing thing. I couldn’t believe it, and I had my researchers look into it. It’s called “Ready, Willing, and Unable to Serve.” It’s like 42 generals, lieutenants, admirals, and other retired military officials that did this report. And I think, “So you’re retired, you can tell the truth.” They said 75% of young adults here in America cannot join the military. 75 percent! I thought, “That can’t be true. They must be talking about Black and Latino kids.” They’re not. Well, look at the criteria: “Graduate from high school”—that knocks off one-third of our kids. 30 percent with high school diplomas can’t pass the entry exam to enter the military. I didn’t think this exam was the high mark of academia. Now here’s the final kicker: You don’t have to be in the best physical condition. You have to be able to run from this wall to that wall without taking a knee. We let people stuff our kids with all kinds of garbage so they can become wealthy. This is intentional capitalism. This is intentional. You all go to the movies. You get a soda, and they say, “For a quarter more I can give you this much more soda.” You say, “No that’s okay,” and they look at you like, “You don’t want this for a quarter?” Now what kid can resist that? Now for a quarter, you’re going to give me that much more soda? You can’t see that deal? How much sugar is in one of those things? They have that much sugar packed into that drink. I’ll tell you this. This is what I realized. We can’t get jobs, we can’t get a decent education, and we have all these people going to prison. It’s costing 35 to 40 thousand dollars a year, and we can’t put money into education. We can’t find jobs; we can’t help people get education. This is not a sustainable way to invest children. That is not sustainable as a way of economically developing our nation. If you think children are our future—People smarter than me know what the solution is. If you think children are our future—I mean for real, if you look at 3rd graders, and think 10 years from now, what are these kids doing, that’s where our country is going. 85 percent of kids in Detroit are behind academically, so you can’t tell me that the future of our country is going to be fine.
Is no one coming to the rescue? If you’re going to save your children in Philadelphia, it’s all you. Nobody is coming to help. In terms of social policy, this is the equivalent of [Hurricane] Katrina. It’s a hard reality to accept. If it’s gonna be fixed, you’re the one who’s got to do it. I don’t care what any research says, I don’t care what anyone else says—I’m gonna save my kids in Harlem. I know no one else is coming. They need us right now. I know it’s not gonna be someone else’s job. And this thing is urgent. If you want to save this country, you’ve got to save your children. There’s a reason that so many families don’t know the science [about childhood brain development] we were looking at today. No one has ever told them. We started Baby College. My daughter is 40, a son who is 38, another son is 32, and the youngest is 12. I’m not sharing that story with you. (Laughter). My wife and I talked before we had that last child. We prayed for that child. We wanted that child to come into the world. If only all of our children were planned and prayed for. Most of the time, the kids are coming. If you plan this thing, your life is only stressed around those kinds of stresses that are planned on, short term. Most of the time, kids are coming and automatically right from the start, there’s no planning. See, if you plan this thing it’s less stressful. If you plan on that child, it will be a loving, nurturing place. These parents, no one told them what it’s like when you’re pregnant. Everything changes. All that smoking and drinking, it’s all over. What Disneyland commercial are you living in? (Laughter). Nobody tells them. If you tell them this is the most important thing you can do. What’s the most important thing you can do with a child? That child gets here. How do you raise your child? Most people raise their children the way they were raised, except the stuff they didn’t like. My mom did this, that I never liked. You were never raised according to the science which we have today—none of our kids ever were. So where do you get your child-rearing skills from?
Back in 1975, we didn’t think there was a lot going on in the brain of that child. So God only knows how my children made it. They don’t have those long-term memories. But now with this last one, I’m reading all this stuff, communicating with him in the womb. I’m like, “Hey little one. How is it in there?” We had educational books, movies, toys, all this stuff we didn’t have for my other kids. We were trying to get all the mobiles mobiling. Now you can actually see what’s going on with the neurons, how they’re developing. So let’s share this with the world.
I look are Harlem, with the worst educational outcomes in the country. Who is teaching our families this? No one. No one is saying anything about this, in the place that needs it most. They give you this stuff and send you home with your kid. If all the stuff you’re talking about is true, and if all this can really affect the child, why aren’t we telling everyone? So we created Baby College. We simply tell our parents the science. That’s the one thing you have to tell them. Get them to understand and use it. The culture we come from can have a dramatic impact on our child-rearing. You can hug a kid. We have special people coming in to help enrich our kids. In my culture, you let the baby cry. People think, “You pick that baby up and they learn bad habits.” This is the problem. If you just tell people they’re wrong, you get nowhere.
That's a long conversation—you’re not gonna get that in a 30 minute session. No, no, it takes a while for a person to figure out, “Oh I believe this.” They search around and take a while to realize how they got there. “Oh, when I was young Timothy‘s mom used to pick him up, and he’s in jail now.” (Laughter). Sometimes your experience is so powerful, so you’ll make conclusions that you think are made scientifically. So I've been trying to think about this issue, why is it that so many African American families are saying that this is science, when so many aren’t doing this? This is just my deduction.
A couple of hundred years ago, if you were African American, intellectually you can do absolutely nothing. The only way that you can survive is if you were reasonable, quiet, orderly, and respectful. I’m looking at all these parents making their children quiet and respectful. It takes a long time for someone to go back and see where they learned something. “Where’d you learn that?” So that’s what I’m trying to do. “Oh, look at that one right there—he’s quiet.” “Oh, but look at that one, he’s wild!” But he’s two! How are you going to make a two year old quiet? Anyone who wants to make a 2 year old orderly has an impossible task, if you don’t understand what’s happening to that brain. Every 2 year old does the same thing. You give them a glass of water, and they dump it out. Now you have two types of reactions. I got my other family, a little more educated, a little more money, that says, “Oh look at him, he spilled water! Oh, looks like we have to clean it up. He’s so cute.” The other says, “Stop! Don’t dump out that water or I’ll smack you!” So we have two families doing an experiment. One saying, “Don’t you ever do that again,” and the other saying, “Ah, what a cute kid.” So this goes on. Who told you, “Ah, experiments have consequences, not tragedy, not horror.” So here this goes on, 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and what do you end up with? Certain kids who are ready to enter school, and certain kids who have already determined that this is gonna be a problem, that this is gonna be difficult.
The most fascinating conversations we have with parents are about discipline. They listen to, “Oh you shouldn’t spank your child,” but they don’t know what else to do until we teach them. They listen, but they don’t believe our science. They listen, they know that you should respect your child. We give a pre- and a post- test on this issue, and the parents were making no improvement. The parents were just rejecting our ideas, and then I asked, “Okay, how many of you have had corporal punishment?” and then I asked my staff the same thing, and they all said yes, they had corporal punishment. I asked, “How many of you believe this?” You can’t teach what you don’t believe. They were teaching it because they had to teach it. They didn’t believe it.
Part of the wonder of our body, our brains, our chemistry, is that we impact the way things change. Unless they were particularly horrible, most folks had some particular fondness for beatings. When people start thinking about those beatings, most people had some kind of warm memory about this thing. It’s kind of like childbirth...if you remember the pain, you will never do it again. The kids say, “You’re not going to smack me are you?” And people don’t remember feeling that same way when they were kids. They struggle with it, they must think it’s not the same experience, but oh yes it is. So part of the challenge we have is just getting our staff to understand why this is important. And now you have to communicate it with the families.
Different cultures understand in different ways. Probably about 20 percent of our kids’ parents are from Africa. And you know what the conversation is? “We don’t want our kids to turn out like these Americans.” Finally, I ask if we could go offline and have a conversation. In our culture we shut this thing down—the more we say, the more they got convinced that we were wrong and they were right. It’s people’s real fears that support this belief of beating and slapping. But I will tell you this: it is hard to get people to change their behavior when all around them they see that it is okay. Deep down inside, people find a way to rationalize it. The parents and kids in Harlem I work with see themselves growing up around middle-class and rich people. They say to me, “You don’t understand what I’m going through. I got to prevent my kids from going to jail. You don’t have to worry.” So I ask, “Did your mom beat you?” “Yeah, my momma beat me.” And you had a beating and you had a whooping. That was when you came home an hour after curfew and the next day your mom thought she was doing the right thing by beating you and calling it discipline. So how do you talk about these issues in a way that people really understand? When my kids were younger, I beat them once or twice but I was wrong and I’m ashamed of it. I didn’t know any other way.
Now the question is, if you don’t have some real help and support, what do you do? The parents are frustrated to tears, and they don’t know how to deal and how to stop this. Look, you don’t want to get yourself in trouble. If you’re not prepared to work through it, it’s very hard to tell folks what they can’t do. People don’t want to hear that. You can forget them listening to you from that point.
In the early part of the 1970’s, we were really trying to figure out the influence of the environment. If you do something and someone smacks you, you will learn not to do that anymore. Unless, that’s the only time you ever get attention. If every time someone does something bad, and that’s the only time you pay attention to them, you encourage them to do it. It’s very easy to tell them what they can’t do; it’s hard to tell them what they can do to get results. Part of the science of behavior management is getting people to do this. In the beginning of this field, we figured out that the first thing we need to do to change behavior is to deal with the environment. Many people respond to environmental cues. I realized that the science would continue and that we would be able to be helpful, but people don’t know how to help parents deal with things. They’re upset, they are angry they want to kill them, they want to kill themselves. People say, “If you haven’t walked in my shoes, I don’t know if you can help me.” I say: “Let me tell you some of the mistakes I've made. We can learn a better way.” I think that’s what we’re trying to do. We didn’t stop at the individuals. We could have convinced parents to change their behavior. You know who was the most powerful force? The parent’s parents. You go home and your mom and aunt are there, and they’re like, “What are you doing girl? This is what children need.” That pressure, how do you get rid of that? There are many layers supporting this stuff. If you aren’t giving a person tools and changing the environment and culture, nothing is going to change.
I don’t know about you, but there were a lot of things I did not do in front of my mother. When I brought my child over, she would say, “Boy take that sweater off, it’s hot in here.” Ten minutes later, my aunt walks in and says, “Boy put that sweater back on, it’s cold in here!” These are powerful people in your life. So part of the challenge is you’ve got to deal with families and then with community. If your children are left with somebody who’s not teaching them the right things, that’s a problem. You need to ask, “Who’s keeping the kids most of the day, and what are their beliefs?”
So how am I supposed to teach the other childcare giver who just learned this in the first place? This is what we teach in the [Harlem Children’s] Zone. Community, it’s what reinforces things. It used to be, when the community stands a certain way, you have to go along with it. You could not curse in front of your children. It was the community standard. Now that’s gone. It used to be community standard that children could not curse in front of their parents. Now that’s gone. It used to be, for kids, that you couldn’t show your underwear in public. You couldn’t have your underwear showing halfway down your legs. I missed that one. Now that’s gone.
So if you can curse, if you can drink, if you can basically have obscenity everywhere, if you can sell drugs, and families are growing up in this environment, you can’t blame the parents for that. If everywhere there is obscenity, and if you can say violence is okay and murder is fine, then whose fault is that? I can’t hold a mother responsible for that. I can’t say that you can create an oasis for your child when the rest of the world is going to hell in a hand basket. We have to impact the whole community stance. We have to say, “We’re not doing that here.” The problem with that is that you can’t just say to the community, “Do this.”
I don’t know about you guys in Philly, but it’s certainly not safe in Harlem. So what’s our Plan B? I would tell you but I don’t have one. I don’t have a Plan B. We’ve got to re-create safe associations for our kids. We’ve got to re-create community. We have 100 blocks [in the Harlem Children’s Zone], and by 2011 10,000 kids will be in my program. We do dental health, education, counseling, enrichment. We have family support. Let’s do everything that we need to do for our children.
I want to end with a challenge for all of you here. We have to be prepared to think outside of the box. People often talk about the limits of what they have to do before they talk about what actually has to be done. Let’s figure out what needs to be done. 90 percent of the places I go, people tell me why it wouldn’t work in places like Kansas City. They say, “Geoff, I understand how that works in Harlem, but this is Kansas City.” Like I was in the easy place! When I was in Seattle, they told me that we can’t do it, our people are too spread out, we can’t do anything, you’re so lucky! I tell them, when I first started work, I went to a foundation for help. I wanted to get this program started in Harlem. And they said, “Look, this place is too big, too chaotic. Go to an easy place like Kansas City.” (Laugher). My challenge is that first before we figure out what we need to do to fix this thing, why don't we figure out what just needs to be done?
Everybody’s copping out on me. Our poor people are so spread out. We can’t do it. You guys are so lucky. Like I told you, no one else is coming. The things we have tried for the past 50 years don’t work. That means we need to try some new ideas. When we had parents come for teacher’s night, I thought we could get 100 parents to come. I was told it couldn’t happen. I went to some of the parents and asked them about it. They said they couldn’t come. I told them, “Well what about if I gave you $1,000 would you come then?” They said yes, and so I said “See, you can come, we just need to find the way.” Let’s focus on what it takes.
When I think outside the box, I am reminded of when I was a psychology major. I went in and talked to the advisor. “How’s your math?” “Not good.” “Well you have to pass statistics.” Sophomore year, on the test, I got 37 percent. I haven’t failed anything since 2nd grade. I was devastated. How do you get 37 to a 65 [passing grade]? I was despondent. Go talk to the professor. Tell him I want to be a psychology major. I don’t know what happened. I talked to the professor, and he said he knew the problem. He said, “I know, this book has a slant. All of the textbooks have a bias—this one works for everyone else except you.” He gives you another textbook and says, “Read that same chapter in new book, and do the problems.” I got it. Finals were coming up. I had 3 chapters left. I read the old book and did the problems. Didn’t get it. Read the same chapters in the new book. I got it. I got an A in the exam, passed the class. It hit me: That didn’t have to do with slant. This guy got me to read two books! (Laughter). I was furious. He had to hold my ego intact, and got me to do some extra work. We’ve got to be prepared to think outside the box.
Let me close with a poem, because I like to write poetry for advocates. It’s called “A Small Army of Love”:
Heard the news yesterday,
And today, mothers cried.
Our children by tens of thousands
Have died.
And for what?
What will stop this madness?
The eternal sadness
Of small little caskets
Filled with dreams never had.
Are we mad?
We need a small army of love.
And no thanks:
We don’t need any rifles,
No guns, and no tanks.
Just love, and help from above.
Our army will be small,
Diverse, and unique.
Little soldiers in braids,
And some with sneakered feet.
All marching for peace,
And an end to the war,
That has claimed little soldiers
As they open their doors
And romp in playgrounds.
Can we stand anymore?
We need a small army of Love.
Start today.
Sentries on guard,
Keeping danger away.
While our young go to school
And play on our streets,
A small army of us
Standing guard while they sleep.
Can it be done?
And the love of our army
Will always sustain us.
When others disdain us with laughs,
ridicule,
Our love keeps us fighting.
Yeah, we’re fighting fools.
So I know what’s been whispered
and what some said aloud.
“Those fools with their pipe dreams,
Their heads in the clouds.”
But when you love all the children,
There’s nothing to do,
But start a small army of Love,
Me and You.
Thank you. (Applause).
Geoffrey Canada Q&A:
Joel Fein: We did round up lots of questions for Mr. Canada, and we’ve found some that we can read.
Question: Were there good old days or are we just ignorant?
Geoffrey Canada: Well, one thing that was mentioned in the slide show was the mitigating influence of church and family. There are things that can heal you, and a lot of those healing influences have been replaced and are communicated through the media. I think that was better in the old days; now we rely too much on the media and don’t seek out other influences. I don’t think there were good old days, but we are making progress.
Question: Is the government able to deliver a model of the Harlem Children’s Zone or is this too big?
Geoffrey Canada: There are a lot of things that we’ve tried that didn’t work. Because of the nature of the electorate, we can change that. We have the power to demand change. When it’s not working, the government should change. When a system or an idea isn’t working, we should change it. Well, we have intentionally involved the government and the community. We do not believe that this model would succeed otherwise. A lot of things we tried did not work, but government is fluid. If you keep doing something that is not working, you need to try something else. For the Harlem Children’s Zone, we said the government should put up 50 percent of the money, but hospitals and other organizations should take on some costs too. This should be the main force behind it.
Question: Can White folks teach parenting to Black folks?
Geoffrey Canada: This issue of culture is really important that we pay attention to. In a West African community I worked with, they didn’t want to learn from Americans. What we ended up doing is to hire community members to help them understand nuances, and to not just nod their head because they’re polite and agreeing with you. Immediately we had a conversation, “Look, this is about effective communication. It doesn’t matter the race or background of the staff—African American or White. The important part is effective teaching and construction.” I don’t think race allows or prevents you from doing better. We need to be honest. You have to consider culture. You need to admit you need help. Honesty is important for this area of discipline. It’s so easy to get this thing wrong. That kind of honesty is necessary regardless of race. We’ve done a lot of work on obesity, with patients, and many of them are African Americans. Dr. Oz came to the [Harlem Children’s] Zone. Dr. Oz emphasized the importance of communication—communicating in the right ways. Communication power is a vehicle cannot be underestimated. I am not able to give this message as Dr. Oz does, but that’s the idea.
