During the closing frames of a video profile for Arkansas Children’s Hospital produced by Heather Collins, Dr. Bettye Caldwell smiles a ruddy smile and quotes “Outwitted” by poet Edwin Markham.
“He drew a circle that shut me out/Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout,” Caldwell said. “But love and I had the wit to win/We drew a circle and took him in.”
“That’s what we have to do for children,” she said. “We’ve got to draw circles that take them all in.”
Thus did the education visionary summarize her groundbreaking philosophy for early childhood education in terms even a first-grader could understand.
“They need to be loved,” Caldwell told The Post-Standard of Syracuse in 2013. “They need to be spoken to, all the time. They need opportunities to explore. They need to be safe and to feel safe. They need stable figures in their lives. They need new experiences. They need to repeat experiences they enjoy.”
Such love, patience and opportunity don’t feel like radical terms when applied to the topic of small children, but sown as they were by Caldwell, they were nothing short of the seeds of a revolution.
“There is no doubt that Dr. Caldwell was way ahead of her time in terms of her thinking about the importance of early childhood care and incorporating education into that care,” said Nicholas Long, Ph.D., elsewhere in the ACH video.
“She really didn’t want children to just be warehoused in child care programs, but really saw the value and the importance of child care programs as a way of helping educate children.”
“Her ideas and the energy that brought those ideas forth were ahead of her time and in many cases, not accepted during her professional lifetime,” said Dr. Patrick Casey of ACH. “But they continue to come to fruition now.”
Bettye Ruth McDonald was born December 24, 1924, in Smithville, Texas. She graduated from Baylor University in 1945 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and speech, earned a master’s from the University of Iowa and a doctorate in early childhood education from Washington University in St. Louis.
In the early 1960s, Caldwell, as director of the Children’s Center at Syracuse University, collaborated on a pilot project that demonstrated children born into poverty declined intellectually in early childhood compared to their peers.
As importantly, her research also showed that by balancing the family bond with an educationally conducive environment, this intellectual disparity could be interrupted or prevented altogether. The Children’s Center came to be regarded as a groundbreaking university-based program for infants and toddlers of working mothers.
“I have never been one to say the early years are everything; they’re just an awful lot,” Caldwell said later in life. “And without a creative foundation, things don’t happen. Without a good foundation a building doesn’t stand.”
Caldwell’s work advanced in two important directions once she left Syracuse University in 1969; first as the foundation for the creation of Head Start.
Originally an eight-week summer program combining daycare and learning to prepare pre-kindergartners for elementary school, the program was created by Dr. Julius B. Richmond, an early Caldwell collaborator. Now a comprehensive year-round child development program, Head Start has provided educational, nutritional, health and other services to more than 30 million children since 1965.
“Four programs have particularly been credited for providing the framework and impetus for the development of Head Start,” wrote Mical Raz in 2013’s “What’s Wrong With the Poor?: Psychiatry, Race, and the War on Poverty.” “The first was Bettye Caldwell and Julius Richmond’s early enrichment program at Syracuse.”
Following her husband to Arkansas, Caldwell continued her work in the field as principal of the Kramer School in Little Rock. During her three years there, she developed a curriculum that integrated children from infancy to elementary grades. The school’s overarching philosophy, as detailed in a 1972 interview with The Boston Globe, was to shift daycares from passive to active participants in children’s development.
“Most daycare centers look at their function from the standpoint of the mother’s benefit — relieving them from custodial care of their children during working hours,” Caldwell said.
“Our daycare actually strengthens the bonds between mothers and children. In many cases, we take enough of a load off a mother so that she can be more loving, more patient and take more time to play with the child. Separation during the day can heighten the enjoyment and appreciation of each other when they are together.”
Yet for as important a role as the properly equipped and motivated daycare’s could be, Caldwell always insisted it was not a suitable surrogate for parental love and attention in the lives and development of children.
“We found too many parents who found no joy in their children, who ignored them or slapped them around at an early age,” Caldwell said of her early research. “It became a keystone of our program: Show these children love.”
Caldwell joined the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in the mid-1970s and continued with the university for about 20 years, earning the position of Donaghey distinguished professor of early childhood education and, after retiring, was granted the title of Donaghey distinguished professor emeritus.
Among her many accolades was Ladies Home Journal Woman of the Year in 1978, topping a field that included Betty Furness, Maya Angelou, Kate Smith and Betty Ford. In 2011, UALR dedicated the Dr. Bettye M. Caldwell Early Childhood Development Classroom, complete with an oil portrait.
“Dr. Caldwell changed the way parents and policymakers understood early childhood development,” said UALR Chancellor Joel E. Anderson in a statement upon her death at 91 in April 2016. “Through her research, Bettye Caldwell helped pave the way for Head Start and other early intervention initiatives designed to help ensure that children born into any situation who are shown love and support can learn the skills necessary to succeed in life.”
Even as time and infirmity took their toll, Caldwell never lost her passion for the youngest and most dependent. When President Barack Obama came under fire for suggesting more must be done to enhance pre-kindergarten programs, she was moved to write the White House saying:
“If there’s anything an 88-year-old woman who has trouble walking can do to help, I’m here.”
Discover more about the Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame Class of 2016.
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