Early in my career, a mentor provided me with a piece of wise counsel: “Always build dignity”. Over the last 40 years, those words have challenged me often. Given the ease with which we can spout critical words, particularly within the tattered fabric of our country, perhaps those three little words, can provide a meaningful balm to what ails us. A conscious effort to building dignity, I submit, is a most worthy goal in both our personal lives and as well in the governance of our country.
Perhaps amid the roar of political rancor, this notion of building dignity has been drowned out and forgotten. If the propositions that “all men are created equal” from our Declaration seems like an ideal from our distant past, perhaps it would be worthwhile to imagine anew Abe Lincoln, purveying the hallowed ground of Gettysburg, asking us to “never forget the unfinished work of living out the proposition that all men are created equal”. If that resonates with you just a twinge, perhaps the weight of 620,000 souls that bled and died during the Civil War is sufficient to revive in us a dedication to advancing the dream of dignity for all.
Viewed humanely, building dignity breaks the debilitating weight of low expectations, anxiousness and loss of hope, and enables people to see the great potential within themselves. From a cooler, more pragmatic perspective, building dignity also enables the economy to grow faster and reduces the prevalence of unemployment, under-employment, gangs, drug use, crime, poor health, and teen pregnancies.
Beyond the imperative to personally extend respect towards others, especially those different from ourselves, the logical question is: How do we do we build dignity in terms of public policy? Given that a lack of dignity often emanates from a poor education, poverty, lack of healthcare, and being treated disrespectfully, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that investing in public education, expanding healthcare, and police reform must be cornerstones to building dignity and rebuilding our country.
To break the cycle of poverty in America, substantially improving public education must be elevated to a strategic priority. Few things in life are more humiliating and debilitating than being a poor reader. Over the last eight years total spending across America for K-12 education increased just 0.2% per year while income and wealth inequality grew to the highest levels since the 1920s. If we want to be more than a society that just helps “widows and orphans” scrape by, we must push education to the top of our priorities.
Here in America we love to say with much bravado “We’re #1”, but the painful truth is that among the top 79 major countries in the world, US students rank 30th in academic achievement. That’s a tragic reality for tens of millions of children and for the future of our nation. We need those that are already wealthy to extend a stronger helping hand up to those in need, and we need to reprioritize where we spend within public education.
According to Noble Prize-winning economist James Heckman, here in America, we have put investment in education “on its head”. The greatest return on investment in education comes not from investing in college educations, but investing in preschools and the earliest grades. Investing in young children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, not only improves cognitive abilities but motivation, self-esteem, health, employment and reduced crime for decades. Given that our public schools are under-resourced relative to the challenges they face, dare we continue to allow them to wallow below a top priority?
If we want to build a more sustainable, inclusive and equitable society, we must also do more to promote and provide non-college bound young adults with an opportunity to build a good life for themselves and a family through skilled trades training.
With respect to healthcare, imagine the insecurity that must be felt by those who lack health insurance. Image, if you can, the despair of those that need medical help but don’t have access to it. In 2008, prior to implementation of the ACA, 45 million people in the US lacked health insurance. By 2016 that number dropped to 27 million. Tragically, Trump chose to stymie Obamacare resulting in the pre-pandemic number of uninsured growing to 29.3 million. To get us back on track we must make it easy again to sign up for ACA insurance, reinstate a penalty for not having insurance, and begin to incrementally lower the age to start Medicare.
To heal our land and lives broken by countless acts of police harassment and far worse, police and criminal justice reform must be accelerated. “Taking a knee” and BLM have been and are legitimate protests against racism and police brutality that cannot and must not be dismissed. Police reform should include community policing, de-escalation training, an emphasis on counseling, community oversight and weeding out officers that are unfit for interacting with the public. Few encounters can leave as deep and lasting a scare on our dignity as being treated unfairly by someone in authority, particularly a police officer.
Building dignity isn’t about providing more handouts, but a helping hand-up. If poverty, racism, crime, illiteracy, inadequate healthcare, and the torn fabric of our country concern you, I submit, we have little choice but to begin anew in building dignity. And the good news is, not only does building dignity often cost nothing, but the wealthy in our country have the ability to resource the necessary initiatives. Secondly, and most importantly, building dignity pays huge dividends. Improving education, healthcare and social justice, dramatically brightens lives and improves the growth of our economy in the near and long term. Sometimes we are blessed with public policy options that play little into zero-sum choices. We need only have eyes to see the potential in others and the courage to lend a helping hand up.