Kenneth Keniston Quotes

• Las escuelas, las instituciones tradicionalmente llamadas a corregir la desigualdad social, son inadecuadas para la tarea; sin oportunidades económicas que sigan a las oportunidades educativas, el mito de la igualdad nunca podrá hacerse realidad. Mucho más que una promesa vacía de oportunidades futuras para sus hijos, los padres necesitan empleos, ingresos y servicios. Y a los niños cuyos antecedentes han atrofiado su sentido del futuro hay que enseñarles con el ejemplo que valen para más de lo que se atrevieron a soñar.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Sueño, Trabajo, Niños

  Kenneth Keniston, Carnegie Council on Children (1977). “All our children: the American family under pressure”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• Los niños pobres viven en un mundo especialmente peligroso: un mundo urbano de barandillas de escalera rotas, de calles concurridas que sirven de patio de recreo, de pintura con plomo, ratas y venenos para ratas, o un mundo rural donde las familias no disfrutan de los niveles mínimos de salud pública aceptados como norma desde hace casi un siglo. Ya sea en la ciudad o en el campo, es un mundo en el que las caries no se tapan y las infecciones de oído que amenazan con la sordera permanente no se tratan. Es un mundo en el que hasta un niño pequeño aprende a avergonzarse de cómo vive.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Country, Children, Dangerous World

  Kenneth Keniston, Carnegie Council on Children (1977). “All our children: the American family under pressure”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• Al final, el destino de los niños depende de nuestra capacidad para utilizar la tecnología de forma constructiva y cuidadosa. La relación entre los niños y la tecnología no es sólo una cuestión de cinturones de seguridad, juguetes seguros, aire, agua y alimentos seguros, alimentos infantiles sin aditivos o una mejor programación televisiva. Todas estas cuestiones son importantes, pero detenerse aquí es olvidar que los niños de hoy pronto serán adultos. Las decisiones tecnológicas que se tomen hoy determinarán, quizá irrevocablemente, el tipo de mundo físico y social que les leguemos y el tipo de personas en que se conviertan.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Baby, Children, Fate

  Kenneth Keniston, Carnegie Council on Children (1977). “All our children: the American family under pressure”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• The most important difference between these early American families and our own is that early families constituted economic unitsin which all members, from young children on up, played important productive roles within the household. The prosperity of the whole family depended on how well husband, wife, and children could manage and cultivate the land. Children were essential to this family enterprise from age six or so until their twenties, when they left home.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Hijos, Marido, Hogar

  Kenneth Keniston, Carnegie Council on Children (1977). “All our children: the American family under pressure”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• Reconociendo que la autosuficiencia familiar es un falso mito, también tenemos que reconocer que todas las familias de hoy necesitan ayuda para criar a sus hijos. El problema no es tanto reeducar a los padres como poner a su disposición la ayuda que necesitan y darles el poder suficiente para que puedan ser eficaces defensores y coordinadores de las demás fuerzas que educan a sus hijos.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Children, Self, Giving

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• Los padres de hoy tienen poca autoridad sobre aquellos otros con quienes comparten la tarea de criar a sus hijos. Al contrario, la mayoría de los padres tratan con esos otros desde una posición de inferioridad o indefensión. Profesores, médicos, trabajadores sociales o productores de televisión poseen más estatus que la mayoría de los padres..... Como resultado, el padre de hoy es un maestro que intenta dirigir una orquesta de músicos que nunca se han conocido y que tocan a partir de una multitud de partituras diferentes, cada una en una notación que el director no puede leer.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Teacher, Children, Player

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• In the early nineteenth century, the doctrine of self-sufficiency came to apply to families as well as individuals.... The familybecame a special protected place, the repository of tender, pure, and generous feelings (embodied by the mother) and a bulwark and bastion against the raw, competitive, aggressive, and selfish world of commerce (embodied by the father).... In performing this protective task, the good family was to be as self-sufficient as the good man.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Mother, Selfish, Father

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• Es engañoso hablar de los cambios recientes en la vida familiar sin hacer hincapié en el hecho de que durante generaciones algunos estadounidenses han tenido que criar a sus hijos bajo presiones especialmente terribles. Aunque gran parte de lo que preocupa a los padres estadounidenses es compartido por todos ellos, los problemas más graves son los que afligen especialmente a una gran minoría: los pobres, los no blancos y, de diversas maneras, los padres de niños discapacitados.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Children, Worry, Parent

  Kenneth Keniston, Carnegie Council on Children (1977). “All our children: the American family under pressure”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• The myth of the self-sufficient individual and of the self-sufficient, protected, and protective familytells us that those who need help are ultimately inadequate. And it tells us that for a family to need help--or at least to admit it publicly--is to confess failure. Similarly, to give help, however generously, is to acknowledge the inadequacy of the recipients and indirectly to condemn them, to stigmatize them, and even to weaken what impulse they have toward self-sufficiency.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Self, Giving, Needs

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• In brief, we have no explicit family policy but instead have a haphazard patchwork of institutions and programs designed mostly under crisis conditions, whether the crisis is national in scope (such as a recession ) or personal (such as a break-up of a particular family).

  Kenneth Keniston

  Family, Broken, Program

  Kenneth Keniston, Carnegie Council on Children (1977). “All our children: the American family under pressure”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• Despite the long-term reduction in familial roles and functions, we believe that parents are still the world's greatest experts about the needs of their own children. Virtually any private or public program that supports parents, effectively supports children. This principle of supporting family vitality seems to us preferable to any policy that would have the state provide children directly with what it thinks they need.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Niños, Creer, Pensar

  Kenneth Keniston, Carnegie Council on Children (1977). “All our children: the American family under pressure”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• Mothers work outside the home for many reasons; one of them is almost always because their families need their income to live up to their standards for their children.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Familia, Madre, Hijos

  Kenneth Keniston, Carnegie Council on Children (1977). “All our children: the American family under pressure”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• Within forty years of their arrival in the Plymouth colony, the first white settlers were afraid their children had lost the dedication and religious conviction of the founding generation. Ever since, Americans have looked to the next generation not only with love and solicitude but with a good measure of anxiety, worrying whether they themselves were good parents, fearful that their children would not turn out well.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Religious, Children, Dedication

  Kenneth Keniston, Carnegie Council on Children (1977). “All our children: the American family under pressure”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• Parents still have primary responsibility for raising children, but they must have the power to do so in ways consistent with their children's needs and their own values.... We must address ourselves less to the criticism and reform of parents themselves than to the criticism and reform of the institutions that sap their self-esteem and power.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Children, Self Esteem, Responsibility

  Kenneth Keniston, Carnegie Council on Children (1977). “All our children: the American family under pressure”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• Confronted with the unhappy facts of exclusion, we sometimes reassure ourselves by telling stories: the poor boys who made it, theblacks who became a "credit to their race," the women elected to high office, the handicapped who made "useful contributions" to our society.... Just as we believe in the self-sufficient family, we also believe that any child with enough grit and ability can escape poverty and make a rewarding life. But these stories and beliefs clearly reflect the exceptions.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Children, Believe, Boys

  Kenneth Keniston (1977). “All Our Children: The American Family Under Pressure”, Harcourt on Demand

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• In the past the intrinsic pleasures of parenthood for most American families were increased by the extrinsic economic return thatchildren brought. Today, parents have children despite their economic cost. This is a major, indeed a revolutionary, change.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Hijos, Pasado, Padre

  Kenneth Keniston, Carnegie Council on Children (1977). “All our children: the American family under pressure”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• La televisión ilustra así las ventajas y desventajas del cambio tecnológico en la sociedad estadounidense. Es un nuevo medio que promete beneficios extraordinarios: gran potencial educativo, ampliación de la experiencia, enriquecimiento de la vida cotidiana, entretenimiento para todos. Pero enseña a los niños los usos de la violencia, ofrece el consumo material como respuesta a los problemas de la vida, vende productos nocivos, habitúa a los espectadores a la estimulación constante y socava la interacción familiar y otras formas de aprendizaje como el juego y la lectura.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Niños, Educativo, Lectura

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• The myth of self-sufficiency blinds us to the workings of other forces in family life. For families are not now, nor were they ever, the self-sufficient building blocks of society, exclusively responsible, praiseworthy, and blamable for their own destiny. They are deeply influenced by broad social and economic forces over which they have little control.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Block, Destiny, Self

  Kenneth Keniston, Carnegie Council on Children (1977). “All our children: the American family under pressure”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• For Americans the contradiction between national ideal and social fact required explanation and correction. Ultimately this contradiction did not lead to the abandonment of the ideal of equal opportunity but rather to its postponement: to the notion of achieving for the next generation what could not be achieved for the current one. And the chief means to this end was a brilliant American invention: universal, free, compulsory public education. This "solution" was especially important for children and families because it gave children a central role in achieving the national ideal.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Educación, Niños, Media

  Kenneth Keniston (1977). “All Our Children: The American Family Under Pressure”, Harcourt on Demand

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• We measure the success of schools not by the kinds of human beings they promote but by whatever increases in reading scores they chalk up. We have allowed quantitative standards, so central to the adult economic system, to become the principal yardstick for our definition of our children's worth.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Educación, Niños, Lectura

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• El dolor psicológico -y la vergüenza ética- de la pobreza estadounidense son mayores por el hecho de que este país posee la riqueza y la energía para criar a todos los niños con un nivel de vida mínimamente decente.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Country, Pain, Children

  Kenneth Keniston, Carnegie Council on Children (1977). “All our children: the American family under pressure”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• One current reaction to change in families, for example, is the proposal for more "education for parenthood," on the theory that this training will not only teach specific skills such as how to change diapers or how to play responsively with toddlers, but will raise parents' self-confidence at the same time. The proposed cure, in short, is to reform and educate the people with the problem.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Self Confidence, Play, Skills

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• Sin duda, los cambios en la estructura familiar estadounidense han sido bastante continuos desde los primeros asentamientos europeos, pero hoy en día parecen producirse tan rápidamente que el cambio ya no es una simple extensión de tendencias a largo plazo. Hemos superado una auténtica línea divisoria: es la primera vez en nuestra historia que un niño típico en edad escolar tiene una madre que trabaja fuera de casa.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Change, Mother, Children

  Kenneth Keniston (1977). “All Our Children: The American Family Under Pressure”, Harcourt on Demand

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