WELCOME to the debut of “The Truth Is!”, a blog of reporting and commentary that aims to be informative, thoughtful and provocative. At least initially, the blog will have a strong heartland flavor by virtue of the connection of a number of us to Cowles family journalism. I am former editor of the Des Moines Register’s opinion pages. Another contributor, Michael Gartner, is former editor of the paper; he later served as president of NBC News. Another former Register editor who has agreed to contribute, Geneva Overholser, is director of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg school of journalism. Followers of the blog will have access also to the work of Herbert Strentz of Des Moines, a close Register and other newspaper watcher who once headed Drake University’s journalism school. Bill Leonard, a longtime Register editorial writer, will add insights.

“The Truth Is!” will be supervised by my daughter, Marcia Wolff, a communications lawyer for 20 years with Arnold and Porter (Washington, D.C.). Invaluable technical assistance in assembling and maintaining the blog is provided by my grandsons Julian Cranberg, a college first-year, and Daniel Wolff, a high school senior.

If you detect a whiff of nepotism in this operation, so be it. All of it is strictly a labor of love. —Gil Cranberg

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Gilbert Cranberg: KIDS AND THE MILITARY

The U.S. military isn’t often regarded as a model for child-rearing practices in this country, but that could change once the findings reported in the Sept. 26 New York Review of Books become widely known. The findings:

“….there is one group of Americans that receives high-quality government-subsidized child-care services, including day care, preschool, home-visiting programs and health care: the U.S. military….[T]hese comprehensive programs aren’t designed to create obedient little soldiers. Instead, they use a play-oriented approach to help bring out children’s individual cognitive and social capacity. This may help explain why military children score higher on reading and mathematics tests than public school children and why the black/white achievement gap is much lower than it is in the general population. Since the military child-care program was created in 1989, the government has repeatedly declined requests to fund an in-depth evaluation, perhaps because if the effects were known, all Americans would demand these programs for their children too.”

I was a military conscript for two and a half years during World War II and despised every minute of it. After all, the military is based on totalitarian values; obedience above all else. That said, for me, military service was a worthwhile experience, so much so that I have become a believer in compulsory military service. In my experience, the chief value of such service is the way you are compelled to associate with people from very different walks of life. Military service is the great leveler, where people from varying segments of society come to know, value and depend on each other.

The educational benefits to military families are an added value. The government may not want to measure and tout that value, but the nation is well served by it.

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