Imagine this scenario. A smiling five-year-old is brought into a bare room with a table. On the table is a plate with a single marshmallow. The researcher who brought them in says she will back in 15 minutes, and gives them a choice: they can eat the one marshmallow while she’s gone or wait until she returns and have two.

I don’t want to go to any more celebrations in which young people are given “beat the odds” awards to acknowledge the individual commitment they have made to overcome obstacles.

As the nation focuses on the new presidential administration, a small but potentially transformative trend is emerging in choices down the ballot: Voters were asked to support the children in their community with new tax revenue and they overwhelmingly agreed. 

"There's nothing so practical as a good theory."  Kurt Lewin (known as one of the modern pioneers of social, organizational, and applied psychology in the U.S.) is right, but his advice takes us only so far. 

In his latest book, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, Harvard professor Robert Putnam describes with great clarity the starkly different experiences of kids living in the same community.