Youth and Violence and Schools, Part II

Let's see. The rain has stopped, at least temporarily. I survived another day with rooms full of smart aleck teenagers with no clue of how to behave appropriately in a classroom environment, in a job environment, in any environment that doesn't involve nonstop swearing, screaming at the top of one's lungs, and making sexual references out of any innocent statement. Ah, that's why I get paid the big bucks I tell ya. It's all about socializing them, and if I teach them anything along the way, that's a bonus. Most of them will, no doubt remember my Yosemite Sam impressions and the time I sang "Happy Birthday" to the little girl in the front row. History? What's that?

Yesterday I mentioned that Ron Huberman was being touted in the New York Times for his plan for dealing with violence among teenagers who happen to be Chicago Public School students. What I didn't mention was that last week he was mentioned in the Chicago Sun-Times for his fiscal management while he was the head of the Office Emergency Management and Communication (The 911 center.). Apparently his oversights cost the city of Chicago $2.25 million in contracts with Motorola for products that have never been seen. This does not bode well for a guy who is supposed to continue the improvement of the Chicago Public Schools that was started by a guy named Paul Vallas and continued by a guy named Arne Duncan, who is now the Secretary of Education for the nation.

Speaking of Arne Duncan, Mr. Duncan weighed in recently on the violence among public school students and some accused him of creating some of the violence by closing some schools and sending their students to other schools in the name of Renaissance 2010, his plan for improving the public schools by closing failing schools and creating new schools with a better plan and approach. The argument goes that closing some schools and sending the students to other schools cause students to cross gang territories and introduce new gangs from other neighborhoods into the schools and neighborhoods where the students have been moved. As a result, it is argued, the conflict between existing gangs and newly introduced gangs at a school cause serious outbreaks of violence that was not there before.

Mr. Duncan called the charge ridiculous. Mr. Duncan does not work in a school on the Southside or Westside of Chicago. In point of fact some violence and disruption of school environments does occur when attendance boundaries are changed for students. Mr. Duncan's denial of these simple facts comes across as the denial of a man on the hill, looking over it all and seeing what he wants to see. Real actions have real life consequences that are not dreamed of in middle class and upper class think factories.

In point of fact, the culprit is not attendance boundaries or school reform efforts, however. The culprit is a society that produces large pockets of squalor, poverty, and need where gangs breed and thrive. A society that does not recognize its inequities encourages reaction. A society that does not offer some solution to the underlying causes encourages the situation to boil over. A society where the wealthy wall themselves off from these problems and denies having caused them is asking for trouble. These problems cannot be dealt with through police and arms. These problems must be dealt with through education, counseling, mentoring, jobs, and putting some time, money, and effort into communities that is not police to lock up perpetrators.

I believe that with Barack Obama as President and clear Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress we now have the best opportunity in my lifetime to address some of our country's social ills, that contribute to the violence among teenagers. We just cannot continue to be in denial about the root causes. We have to recognize those causes. We have to come up with real solutions for helping kids avoid the pitfalls. I'm tired of kids in blue and black colors on one side of the street and kids in red and black colors on the other, looking across the street angrily at one another. I'm tired of wondering when this staring match will result in one side pulling out a 9 mm Glock and starting the carnage once again. I'm tired of reading about a mother being devastated because her child was the innocent victim of thugs who were bad shots and missed their intended targets.

I speak as a teacher from Chicago, but I know that this is a national problem. We all need to get on board with this. It is not a teacher problem. It is not a school administrator problem. It is not a police problem. It is not the Secretary of Education's problem. It is not the President's problem. It is a problem that belongs to all of us as Americans. It may cost a little in tax dollars to deal with it, but in the long run it will be a hell of a lot cheaper than incarcerating and/or burying another generation of our youth.