RIP Jule Sugarman, architect of Head Start

Jule Sugarman, a Director and Architect of Head Start, Is Dead at 83 - NYTimes.com:

Mr. Sugarman in 1972, via NY Times

Mr. Sugarman, who also ran the program for most of its first five years, was executive secretary of the 13-member commission that planned Head Start in 1964 after President Lyndon B. Johnson declared his War on Poverty. Five-year-olds “are inheritors of poverty’s curse and not its creators,” the president said when he introduced Head Start.


“Unless we act,” he added, “these children will pass it on to the next generation like a family birthmark.”

In a just society, no child would be allowed to go hungry. We may never find a practicable economic system to eradicate poverty, but in a wealthy nation, regardless of how their parents may have failed them, it's never a child's fault they were born poor. Every child deserves the opportunity to get ahead. We may not have the resources on the planetary level to do this for every child, but in this country, with our level of wealth, every child should be in school, no child should be in a shitty school, and no child should be in school hungry.

Government is what we decide to do together. It is a disgrace what our government spends our hard-earned tax dollars on, in general. But Head Start, that's an example of something that needed to be done, something we should all be proud of our public servants for implementing and administering.