A few days ago the 23rd murder of a Chicago Public School student occurred. I beleive I may have spoken on these things before, so pardon me if I bore you with this. The school superintendant will be going to the state capital to ask for funds for something and more anti-gun legislation. On the news we have seen many crying parents and friends of the deceased, not to mention the occasional caught murderer. The last one, only this past weekend, a 22 year old (at the time, now he is 23) beat an 18 year old to death with a bat. It had been part of an ongoing fued in the neighborhood.

In the last five years, these kinds of events have always been qualified as gun contol and bad parenting. As though there were not already gun control laws in this city (it is illegal to own an unregistered weapon and they have not registered a hand gun since the 70s). I am not sure what kinds of laws they expect will make a difference at this point and I really think it is just an attempt to put mo niggas in prison longer.And as for that bullshit about parenting. I am really tired of hearing about it. It is not something you can change. You can not make parents be better parents. Well you can, but you have to engage them as parents and that is not something that the public education system is currently set to do.

Lately they have added the idea of a lack of conflict resolution skills as part of the problem too. Yes, it is, but I think (and of course I would) think that there are some other things that need to be brought into this conversation. I would like to add dialogue about the creating and sustaining of a context where one child killing another is a viable and reasonable conclusion to come to. I just have the hardest time wrapping my head around a situation where murder is a conclusion that one would jump to in that instance. If you come in on your mate engaged in coitus with your best friend/worst enemy/some knuckehead from down the block, I could understand that as a context for jumping to murder as the conclusion. A crime of passion as it were.

I am not able to see what is obvious about killing someone over an affront in which you should have had time to come to your senses and see the error of making the choice to murder someone. I know there are those who will be quick to blame the culture of violence in which we live (or are accused of living), with violence on screens, violent video games and so on for creating that context. In some instances perhaps, but I do not think that applies so readily here. What I think is that there are a great many causes that converge for the current effect and that altering some of them, we would be able to alter the outcome as well.

We can not alter people's parenting skills or lack there of. First you would be hardpressed to find a parent who would admit that they are a bad parent and submit to some kind of training or schooling as far as parenting goes. So let us proceed knowing that blaming parenting, especially with no reasonable way to change parenting is a phenomenal waste of time. So can we stop saying that? I think some more workable aspects of this convergence would be along the lines of teen-aged masculinity via discipline and competition. Normally these kinds of activities would be played out on some sporting field. Unfortunately for us, they have pretty much removed a lot of the opportunities that gave young black males the chance to bump chests as it were.


Anyway, here are somethings I would like to see happen, I know they won't because it is so hard to change people's minds when it comes to education.

1. Teach young black males programming languages at the age of 11-13, the truth is if you can write programs, don't nobody give a fuck how bad your grammar is. The earlier they learn it, the sooner they will be getting paid for it. Right now in a classroom of 20-25 children, there are 5 computers that are hardly used at all, and when they are they act as a reward for good behavior or something to play games on. Let's get them to writing their own programs, their own games, their own products.

2. Make literacy elective. The truth is everyone should learn how to read, instructions, procedures, manuals. That you need to have to get through life. Following a plot, watching characters develop and understanding literature is something you enjoy by wanting to, not by being forced to.There are some rudimentary reading skills that are necessary, but beyond that what is the benefit (real not imagined)? Placing a heavy emphasis on literature is a waste of time and effort. They would do better place emphasis on math, science, history and civics. Literature should be classified with art, music and drama type stuff.

3. If any school employee is found to have engaged in a sexual or otherwise inappropropriate relationship with any child in that school, that employee is immediately fired and every other employee of the school is fined 25% of their pay for a total of 6 months (the principal for a year). Those relationships do not happen in a vaccum, and they have all sorts of repercussions none of which benefit the child. It is the business of every employee of that school to care for every child of that school.

4. Zero tolerance truancy. When it is a school day, no child will go unaccounted for. The child will either be in school or in a situation that has been verified by the parent or guardian of that child by a truant official. So if the police see a child (6-16) not in school during an official school day, they have to take the child into custody and off of the street. The parent will be notified and held accountable by fines Children will not be able to take public transportation during school hours unless they are in the care of an adult or have a verifiable dismissal slip.

5. Bring back Home Economics this is the only opportunity we will have in helping the future to be better parents than today. They will not be able to say they did not know better. Also it would be a chance to teach life skills that they may not have learned at home like money management, basic home repair (electrical, plumbing, carpentry...)

6. Competative dance. Not ballet, jazz, african or ballroom, but urban street dancing, but more competative and in a team environment. Boys who do, love to dance and they want to dance the way they want to dance. Mostly in competative groups. It takes discipline and it is something that is wonderful and organic in us. But we always stifling our organic shit for some eurocentric bullshit that is forced on us and excludes too many of us. We need to find ways to be inclusive of as many of our young males as possible. I remember as a teenager, under streetlights dancing, battling against my peers for recognition of my skill as a 'Bopper'. Young men may no longer bop, but they still battle onna flo.

7. Make the schools safe. This is hard because what is currently accepted as 'safe' is not. There needs to be safe travel in the halls as well as to and from schools. In order to make the schools safe you have to know the children to determine who needs to be protected from others as well as the ones who need to be protected from themselves. We need to get a better grip on group dynamics so that we minimize the impact of psychopaths on the group. I can not overstate the importance of this need.

I guess I am saying it here, just so I know it will be said. Right now, someone entering their freshman year of high school has a less than 50% chance of graduating from a Chicago Public High school in 5 years. Schools are not safe (see number 3) and education is antagonistic and has almost no payoff. I hate to think that there is a generation of young black men we are going to have to write off until someone in the system comes to their senses and stops trying to change the people when it is the procedure that is so fucked up.


God, I am just so frustrated with the lack of any real dialogue about this issue, but there is no lack of canned answers. It is the canned answers that are really preventing any real progress with this. We have become so corporatized that new and fresh ideas are spurned because they did not come through the proper channels. There are some fundamental things that need to be taught in school, but we are too often believing in what we have heard and being to scared to try anything else.


Or I guess we can make them pull their pants up. And four you folks on that bandwagon, cuz I ain't. There is no real importance in that. Only the child's ability to conform to a standard that opresses and marginalizes him and his kind. Fuck that.

I'm sorry that is probably too much for one post. I just am so frustrated and writing is what I do.

quote:

Originally posted by Wiz:
I'm sorry that is probably too much for one post. I just am so frustrated and writing is what I do.

~EXACTLY. So you should use that gift for good. This is what, imo, you can/should do. Starting writing another book, of fiction, and hit on every last point that you made. Make sure that you work your fictional/hypothetical SOLUTIONS into the plot. You know....these things...

....Anyway, here are somethings I would like to see happen, I know they won't because it is so hard to change people's minds when it comes to education.

~Be sure to hit on all seven of them and present them with a "sucessful result" in a way that your audience can actually see it happening. Those are REAL ideas, not fantasy, afterall. Synicism (sp) and skeptiscm may render your ideas as "fantasy"...but, there's your challenge.

And as for this....

God, I am just so frustrated with the lack of any real dialogue about this issue, but there is no lack of canned answers.

...what you should do is BE SURE to include a "book club questions" at the end of your book. This "new" thing is DESIGNED TO CREATE DIALOGUE. Believe me, readers REALLY DO use those pages. A while back, I was with a group that met once a month at a restaurant...one person picked the book for that month and the restaurant. We ate, talked about the book. Got our drankydrank on...and talked about the book. It was fun, and we really did use the book club questions. Every last one of them. We had a good time with Cane River, and also with Coldest Winter Ever. We'd had a little too much to drink with the latter discussion --- and debated rather loud and lengthy on whether or not a man is "technically" gay if he gets a blowjob from a man. That may seem rather obvious and "case-closed", but believe it or not we had "differs". Go figure. But, anyway...I digress.

You should do this. Mention me in the acknowledgments. , in advance. ~

Wrote a book, got it published, very bad experience.

Wiz, if only...
Those are some real solid suggestions. It's a pity that school boards and school systems, which should be the most fluid, flexible and progressive systems in our communities, are often the ones most mired in bureaucracy and conservatism.

It would take a real commitment to thinking outside the box for most school systems to even think about maybe suggesting that they might think about remedies like the ones you've listed.


In my community, the school board is partisan, which shows members are more about politics than serving the community through preparing its children in ways that mean something. There is not even a mechanism for residents to give fresh and doable ideas to the school board. The most a person could do is establish a charter school--which to me is immoral and a quagmire from a different nightmare.

I especially like #1 and #2, but all those suggestions offer practical and measurable fixes to real problems.

...

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