For the past six years I have worked in a Chicago Public School that is located in a neighborhood that is best known locally for being a place where there are a lot of gang-related shootings. My school has attendance boundaries that place it at the crossroads of five different street gangs, some primarily African-American, some primarily Latino, and at least one that does not discriminate. The latter accepts thugs of all races and ethnicities.
A great deal of attention has been brought to the Chicago Public Schools recently because of the continuing patterns of violence, student against student. Students have been shot on city buses. Students are regularly shot while walking down the street because they belong to a gang and another gang targets them. Last week a student was beaten to death outside a high school because he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and two rival gangs were having it out after school was out. He belonged to neither gang.
Two years ago one of the students at my school shot another student from my school while he was walking the two blocks from the bus stop to the school. The shooter had just changed gangs for some reason and was proving his loyalty by shooting a member of another gang. As it turns out he was a lousy shot and the young man that he shot was a member of neither gang. The Principal and Assistant Principal were both gone to a meeting that day and as the third in command, I was in charge that day. The entire school had to be put on lockdown, and crisis management had to be put into place to reassure the students in attendance that there was not going to be a gang war in the school or out in front of the school that afternoon.
In the Chicago Public Schools, the best and brightest, the most promising students are siphoned off and sent to magnet schools, college preparatory schools, schools for the gifted and talented. The students who are academically challenged don't get into those schools and they go to neighborhood schools. These schools are full of kids from questionable homes, kids in special education, kids who belong to gangs and are more committed to the gang than school. An underlying current of anti-social behavior, larceny, and violence permeates many of them. It is the job of the staff at these schools to cull the ones who can be saved and give them the best education they can, to prepare them for some sort of productive future, hopefully involving post-secondary education. It's a difficult and often stressful job.
Amazingly, there are a lot of good kids who survive this environment and go on to live very ordinary lives as good citizens. We have to work at protecting them and guiding them. To do this we have to minimize the disruptive elements, the gang pressures, the disruptive behaviors in the classrooms, in the halls.
Today, at my school, there were a number of students who went on a field trip. As it turned out a number of the students who were gone were students who routinely add to the disruptive nature of the day. Another group of disruptive, anti-social sorts were just absent for whatever reason. There were maybe twenty-five or thirty kids absent from the mix, but the makeup of that twenty-five or thirty kids was such that today was a very peaceful, productive day in the life of the school. It made a difference.
Last week Marilyn Stewart, President of the Chicago Teachers Union, was quoted in the Chicago Sun-Times as supporting the funding of an alternative school where chronically disruptive students or those with criminal behaviors would be sent to receive appropriate counseling and behavior modification before being allowed to return to their regular schools. Apparently, some other cities have tried this approach with good results. The changed atmosphere in my school today because of the absence of a group of key troublemakers suggests that it would have a positive result in the neighborhood schools.
Meanwhile, on the front-page of the New York Times today, there was a very large article devoted to a program being advocated by Ron Huberman, the new CEO of the Chicago Public Schools. (The former CEO of the Chicago Public Schools is now the Secretary of Education, in Washington D.C.) Mr. Huberman commissioned a detailed statistical study to provide a profile of the most vulnerable students in this violence epidemic. Who are the ones most likely to be violent? Who are the most likely to be victims?
A plan, financed by $60 million in federal stimulus money is being started up to identify at risk students and provide them with adult mentorship, a paid job and a local advocate who would be on call for support 24 hours a day. This program would focus on mental health and prevention over security as has been traditional in efforts to deal with inner city violence among youth.
From a teacher viewpoint, I say "It's about time." I do not advocate lessening any police protection or security for the schools in question. This is still necessary. However, over time we may be able to ease up on the security efforts if kids get the counseling and assistance they need. Teaching and learning in schools goes only so far. Too many of our kids need something more. They need structure. They need socializing. They need counseling. They need nurturing that cannot come from an already overtaxed classroom. Our cemeteries and prisons are full to overflowing with those who did not get this assistance.
How do we go about helping the violent, the criminal youth? Do we use the methods advocated by the Chicago Teachers Union? Do we use the methods advocated by the CEO of the Chicago Public Schools? How about we get the two together and get them to jointly create a workable program. We're all here for the kids, and kids are the future of this nation. An investment in the counseling, the structure, the care will cost a lot less in the long run than the police protection and costs of incarceration for a large chunk of our population. And it will have long-term positive effects for our nation as a whole. Lower crime rates? Lower poverty rates? More productive neighborhood schools? Who can not get behind that? Invest in your country or risk seeing it become something less than a major world power, and good place to live.
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