A little girl with a passion for red causes Schindler's heart to leap to his throat (Keneally 1982). He watches from the hillside above as the 3-year-old negotiates a crowd of people being rounded up for an SS camp. A soldier shushes her along to line her up with the others, making no effort to shield her from observing a fellow soldier force a whimpering boy down so that he can shoot him in the back of the head.
The incident tells Schindler that now things have gone much further than ever before. No need to protect the children from seeing violence if they are all doomed to die, he realizes. Meanwhile, the child dressed in showy red wends her way slowly, unnoticed, seemingly oblivious, into a building, where later her uncle will retrieve her, quivering with fear, from under the bed.
Schindler's List dramatically brings home the cavalier cruelty of the Holocaust and the frightening fragility of life. This incident also points up a remarkable quality about children: Although they may sometimes act as if they are impervious to danger, they are always vulnerable to it.
As this child did for the bystander Schindler, children frequently make the adults around them reorder their priorities. Survival first, safety second. Only then can parents think about giving their children a good experience in life; providing them a good education; helping them live up to their potential, become ethical and compassionate adults, and, maybe, pursue the finer things in life.
Years after the Holocaust and Schindler's successful efforts to save those adults and children within his ability to save, we read the newspapers and realize that children around the world are in as much danger today as they ever were. James Garbarino (p.12) describes our environment as "socially toxic." Increasing poverty levels and economic pressures are distracting adults from children's needs, and a riskiness in life—from threats from disease, violence, and death at an early age—is all around us. Looking at the way childhood should be, Garbarino cites the U.N. Convention of the Rights of the Child, which proclaimed childhood as "a protected niche in society." "A child is to be shielded from adult economic, political, and sexual forces," he says.
In his book The Vulnerable Child (1996), Richard Weissbourd points out that the true nature of childhood vulnerability reaches beyond race and class, the categories that have polarized people for years and provoked much hatred and brutality toward children. Filled with examples of vulnerable children of all ethnic and economic backgrounds, his book identifies the conditions that children need to prosper. Among them are protection from destruction and prejudice, a continuous relationship with a consistently attentive and caring adult, opportunities in school and in the community for real achievement, and, finally, strong friendship with other adults and children.
When children have such ingredients, they are likely to build trust in themselves, and, in adulthood, despite hardships and abrasions, find a capacity for work, love, and play, Weissbourd writes.
Many of the writers in this issue discuss how educators can make school a haven from prejudice and violence, teach understanding of different cultures and values, create rich opportunities for achievement, and affirm children in the deepest sense. Mike Rose (p. 6), whose travel itinerary included some of the poorest schools in the United States, documents that hundreds of teachers are seizing their power every day—the power to make school a safe and wonderful place for children. Unable to change world conditions except by increments, they stand in the front lines, cherishing those who are in their care.
