Something Better for My Children: The History and People of Head Start

Remember the War on Poverty? Lyndon Johnson declared it in 1965, even as that other war in Vietnam was escalating under his stewardship. Thirty years later, we have a memorial in Washington, D.C., to remind us of one war and the Head Start program to remind us of the other. Something Better for My Children is Los Angeles Times reporter Kay Mills's account of Head Start's first three decades. Mills begins with Sargent Shriver, then the head of the Office of Economic Opportunity, and chronicles his efforts to get news of the program out into the communities that would most benefit from it via a good-old-girl's network of society women, politicians' wives, and even the First Lady, herself. She discusses the initial popularity of the program among liberals and conservatives alike and describes the roadblocks it met along the way.

But Head Start's history is only part of what interests Mills; in the course of writing this book, she has visited Head Start programs all over the country, from urban Minneapolis to rural California. At a time when all government-funded social programs are increasingly coming under fire, Mills uses firsthand accounts of the people whose lives have been shaped and changed by Head Start in its defense. There are the children, who received not only academic training but basic health services as well, and the parents, many of whom were inspired to improve their own lives by their involvement with the program. Though Mills is forthright about the problems that afflict Head Start today, such as staff shortages and varying quality from center to center, in her view, the benefits far outweigh the obstacles.