In a Blue State of Mind

It's very easy, when one surrounds oneself with people of a like mind, to begin to believe that the whole world thinks that way. Or at least you can forget for considerable periods of time that there are numerous souls out there who disagree with you, who have a very different slant on life. Specifically, in the blue state bubble where I choose to live my life, it is very easy to believe that the world has changed and society as a whole is much more accepting of differences than it once was.

Alas, it is not so. A couple of days ago, I walked into the main office at the school where I work and two older women (That is to say that they are about my age, 50 something.) were talking to a twenty-something female teacher about why she and her long-time boyfriend had not gotten married yet. Now I know the teacher in question and I have known for some time that she and her boyfriend live together (I believe cohabitate is the term.) and have bought a house together and have a stable relationship. Perhaps I was a little oblivious, but it never occurred to me that anyone would have an issue with this. It's so normal. So I blithely jumped into the conversation, "How long have you and your boyfriend been living together anyway?"

I thought everyone knew the facts. Not! The two older women were taken aback. One jerked her head around to the young woman and said, "Is this true?" The other woman of the older persuasion said, "I guess you and I live in a different world." An unstated "Tsk! Tsk!" hung in the air. I knew I had screwed up and mentioned something that I shouldn't have, but in my world it was not an issue and I forgot for a moment that there are still cultural conservatives lurking everywhere. I felt it necessary, being an old guy, to let them know that my wife and I lived together for quite some time before we finally got married, and more than anything else, it just made life easier, from a family standpoint, and for tax and legal purposes. We had always been committed to each other, married or not.

I live in the middle of a major city. I have friends who are black, white, various kinds of Latino, immigrants from Europe, immigrants from Africa, immigrants from Asia, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, those without religion at all, gay and lesbian, and just about variety of humanity. A great many friends who I have known over the years live together for the long haul without getting married. I have gay friends who have chosen to get married. I have both gay and lesbian friends who raise children in non-traditional settings with perfectly normal and acceptable results. This is my state of normalcy.

Bearing all of that in mind, it is just absolutely mind-boggling that a Justice of the Peace in Tangipahoa Parish in Southeastern Louisiana (Hammond, Louisiana or somewhere thereabouts) refused to perform a marriage for an inter-racial couple because he said that he had reservations about the hard life that children of such a marriage would have. Is this real? In 2009? I believe the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed such outrageous practices somewhere in the last century. I find it unconscionable that most states do not recognize gay marriages or civil unions, for reasons so numerous that it would take an entire post just to go into that, and yet there are still cultural conservatives who think an African-American and a white person of European ancestry should be prevented from marrying. And yet those people think that they have a personal mandate to prevent this from happening. Oh, and the Pope still doesn't believe in birth control either.

What planet are these people from? What century do they think they're living in? Some of their beliefs are narrow-minded, racist, destructive, and stupid. Some are just narrow-minded, destructive, and stupid. I suppose a lot of one's beliefs and actions spring from the paradigm within which they operate. Well this is 2009 and the predominant paradigm for survival and successful navigation of the next century is a lot closer to that of the blue state liberal than of the red state cultural conservative. Those attitudes that are the least accepting of ways of life that are not like one's own, that are judgmental and punitive of those ways of life not like one's own, these are the attitudes that divide a society, that are destructive of people's lives, that do not allow us as a society to progress.

Now, if you'll excuse me, Liberal Man has a date at the Interracial Gay Atheists Cohabitation and Child Rearing Society. I believe he is the guest speaker and I wouldn't miss this for the world. All of my closest friends will be there. I may have to bring my guitar. I'm in a blue, blue state of mind........

Love Means....

A couple of weeks ago I had the flu and I lost one weekend and three days of work, before returning to the upright, functioning world once again. Babs had the chutzpah to brag that she hadn't gotten the flu from me. Now, a couple of weeks later, she is down and out and congested and suffering from body aches, fevers, and acute tiredness. She tried her best to work through the whole thing and treat it as some minor inconvenience. Today she has been on the couch under a blanket with a raft of assorted OTC medications, a box of tissue, and a bottle of water on the table next to her. Hasn't gotten out of her jammies all day. The television is tuned to the Dumb Comfort TV Sitcom Channel. I believe it takes the Mega-Premium cable package to get that channel and it's only available when you're sick.

The thing is, when I was down and out with the flu, Babs was there for me. She brought me food and drink, and pillows and blankets. She was Super Nurse, all the while continuing with her work. (She is a full-time writer and has a home office.) I was duly impressed, and being sick I felt a little warm and fuzzy knowing that all of that care was heaped upon me.

Now the tables are turned and it is my turn to reciprocate. I know a lot of people would expect a guy to write about how it was a lot more difficult for him to do what his loving wife had done for him, but not so. I'm there. It takes two to tango, and if one partner has the flu there won't be any tangoing happening. Step up to the plate partner.

Need a blanket? I got it. Need chicken soup? I got it. Need a run to the drug store for anti-flu meds? I got it. Just need a little love and compassion? I got it. Last night Babs wanted something gooey and cheesy for dinner. I used a recipe, but made kick-ass macaroni and cheese from scratch. Don't know if I'll ever be able to go back to lesser mac and cheese now. Tonight she's feeling a little better, if still horizontal, but wants a pizza delivered. Hey I can do that with my eyes closed, and both hands tied behind my back.

I got to thinking about this and frankly it sounds almost like one of those Love is...cartoons that you see in the comics section of the newspaper. In this case, love is being taken care of when you're sick, and love is taking care of someone when they're sick. It works both ways. Funny thing about that.

When relationships are young and new, oftentimes we think of love as sex 16 times a day in every room in the house. Love is taking your lover to do all the things you love and having them appreciate them, while going with them to all the things they love and appreciating those things as well. Love is just being together and taking walks in the park and being all gaga over each other.

After twenty-plus years love takes on new meanings. Love still means sex, just not as often, and perhaps not on the kitchen counters any more. Love is still appreciating those things the other loves, but love is also buying your lover a gift, not because you think it's cool, but because you know they will think it is ultimately cool. Love means sometimes you don't do things you'd really like to do, because you'd really like to do something else with the one you love. And yes love means giving the one you love a lot of love and personal attention when they're sick while knowing in your heart, when it comes your turn, when you feel like crap they will be there for you too. And every once in a while, amazingly enough, you still get a little gaga over each other.

If I Pay for a Study, Will They Say What I Want? Duh!

As if it weren't bad enough that the right-wing nuts have made a crusade out of bashing Obama and his efforts to get healthcare reform enacted, now the insurance industry has begun funding studies to show that healthcare reform would cost Americans more money in higher insurance costs. This comes from the industry that has made massive amounts of money over the past decade and still takes every opportunity to raise costs even more.

So on the eve of a vote in the Senate Finance Committee on a really mediocre healthcare reform bill that would not include a public option, and would still leave millions of Americans uninsured, the insurance industry released a study that showed, guess what? That this healthcare reform bill would result in higher insurance costs for Americans. Who paid for this study? The insurance industry. What did it show? A result that the insurance industry wanted. Most thinking individuals have dismissed this study as simple "pay em to say what we want." And frankly, insurance costs are going up anyway, if we don't do something about it. Can you say healthcare reform? I bet you can. Write and/or call your Congressman and your Senators. We all need to get behind this or lobbyists and idiots in Congress will make it go away, like it has a bunch of times before.

Anyway, today the Senate Finance Committee bill on healthcare reform passed out of committee when a majority, including one lone Republican voted for it. This is the bill that has been pursued by Senator Baucus and which does not include a public insurance option. Now this bill will be combined with a more liberal version from the health committee and the fighting and compromising on the Senate floor will begin. This 15 round heavyweight bout is scheduled to begin sometime next week. How long will that take? Who knows?

Of course the eventual passage of some healthcare reform in the Senate only means that it then passes over to the House of Representatives and Congressmen in the House will spend an inordinate amount of time arguing over reconciliation of their version of the bill with the Senate version, and some eventual compromises will be reached this decade hopefully, this century surely. Meanwhile the insurance companies will continue to put out as much propaganda as they possibly can to obfuscate the issue and make it seem like we need to keep things the way they are. Of course they want things to stay the way they are. They're making money hand over fist. Who cares about the public and their petty little healthcare needs? This is the land of the free and the home of the profit. Capitalism rules dude! Get the government out of my profits! (Oops, sorry. I was channeling a Blue Cross executive for a moment there.)

Meanwhile the public will continue to pay through the nose for their healthcare. Meanwhile millions upon millions of Americans will continue to have no health insurance and will not be able to get any healthcare except emergency care. Meanwhile the cost of healthcare in America will continue to spiral upwards. Meanwhile the average citizen of most every other advanced industrial nation in the world will continue to get better healthcare than we do in the U.S. and will enjoy better health as a result. Isn't there somebody out there who wants to get pissed about this? Isn't there somebody out there who wants to start a citizens' movement? Isn't there somebody out there who remembers what the public at large can do when it mobilizes, as it did against the Vietnam War? This is our country. This is our health. This is our issue. For God's sake, let's see that a reasonable reform of our current system is reached. Let's see that all Americans have equal access to healthcare. I think it's a Constitutional right. (Equal protection under the law.)

What Would Have Happened If Chris Columbus Had Stopped to Ask Directions?

Once again it is Monday and here I am with my Views From the 14th Floor. Yes, boys and girls this is the blog that dares to ask the hard questions. "When have your t-shirts' underarms gotten so yellowed from sweat stains that you should throw them out? How many holes are allowable in your underwear and how large can they be before you throw them out? How long can a person reasonably wear a pair of gym shoes at a public gym before it is no longer socially acceptable?" Now, my readership is divided into two camps, male and female. I would be willing to wager that the female component is at this point thinking, "EWWWW!" Meanwhile, most of the males are thinking, "Good question. I've often pondered these issues as well." And no doubt they have. Trouble is I sometimes pose these great questions but have no real answers. If you have any, there is space at the end of each of these posts for commentary. Feel free. I may very well need to make a trip to Macy's to replace various undergarments, and possibly my running shoes. However, I have larger fish to fry today.

Today is Columbus Day and like many government employees that means a three day weekend. I read in the newspaper today that the modern version of Columbus Day was created during The Great Depression by FDR because he thought we needed another public holiday. October 12 is, ostensibly, the day on which Christopher Columbus first set foot in America. Of course we all know that Chris never actually set foot in North or South America, but on various islands south and southeast of North America. So really Chris Columbus really didn't discover America, as much as he discovered the gold mine that is tropical tourism in the Caribbean.

Chris Columbus was a very bad tourist, more like a forewarning of things to come, the Conquistadors. (And no Conquistadors is not the name of a punk band, although it might make a good name for one.) The funny thing is, when I was a child (Some, my wife for instance, might say that I have yet to emerge from childhood, but that's another issue.) I was taught that Christopher Columbus was a visionary, out there to prove that the world was round when ignorance of that fact abounded. He was a man with a vision and a quest to be quested.

Well, as it happens Chris Columbus, who sailed on Spanish ships for the Spanish crown, was an Italian, and he had a vision alright. He had a vision of great wealth. Trouble was, no one in Italy would invest in his vision, nor would anyone in France or Portugal or anywhere else but Spain. I don't know if Isabella thought he was cute or what, but she got talked into giving him a little cash and three ships. She talked Ferdinand into going along.

Off went Chris Columbus and crew in the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, thinking they would reach Asia in a month or two. Boy was he lost. People used to think that he landed on the island of San Salvador. Current thinking is that he landed somewhere in the Bahamas. Apparently he couldn't afford a condo, so he took a bunch of natives prisoner and went back to Spain.

What we now know is that Chris, not only didn't discover America, but a bunch of islands off the coast, and the natives there seem to think that they discovered them first, but we also know that Vikings, not Minnesota Vikings, but Viking Vikings from Scandinavia (Now we know them as Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes.) landed in North America (Canada really) several hundred years before Chris Columbus even thought of sailing westward to reach the East. Trouble was the Vikings, being practical people decided that fighting with the natives all the time wasn't worth the effort, especially if you had to live in Canada. Had the Vikings discovered Martinique, say, they might have stayed.

At any rate, the important thing about Chris Columbus is that his arrival began the coming of the Europeans to America in droves, and not going away. They took over. It should be noted here that in some states with large Native American populations, they celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day and not Columbus Day. Columbus brought the priests and the soldiers, and America was never the same afterwards. "There goes the neighborhood," so to speak.

The thing is, the Europeans believed themselves to be superior. They were Christians and they believed that it was their duty to Christianize people with other religions. Some didn't really want to be Christianized. They died. They had superior technology. The Scientific Revolution had come to Europe. They thought it was their duty to civilize less advanced cultures. Some didn't really want to be civilized. They died. And then they had lots of diseases that indigenous peoples had never been exposed to. Nobody wanted those, and guess what? Millions of them died.

The Republican across the hall at work likes to remind me that it was not just the force of superior arms (Guns and cannons and stuff) that gave America to the Europeans. It was the fact that European nations had full-time armies. Most nations in those days had only citizen armies to protect themselves. The Native Americans often had to leave their farms and their villages and go to fight, leaving the villages to take care of themselves, or not. The Europeans had full-time farmers and businessmen and people back home taking care of the economy while full-time soldiers did their full-time jobs, conquering and killing people.

I got to thinking about this aspect, as described by the Republican across the hall, today. And it occurred to me that during the George W. Bush years, this nation was committed to one war in Iraq and another in Afghanistan. Both required thousands upon thousands of soldiers. The manpower needs of the war went beyond what was available in the full-time professional army that the U.S. had. More men were needed. In previous generations a draft would have been instated. Yet the lesson of the draft during the Vietnam War gave the nation's leadership pause and they opted to call up regiment after regiment of guess what? Citizen soldiers who had to leave their jobs and their families and their villages to go off and fight so there would be no draft to protest, as in Vietnam.

If one follows the logic of the Republican across the hall, we have made our nation more vulnerable to attack from the outside. We are not using a full-time professional army, but citizen soldiers who fight in a time of dire need. The best and the brightest are taken from their positions in the civilian world to fight and die. Are we turning ourselves into a nation ripe for the pickings by a nation with a full-time professional army who are trained to conquer and kill, while their industry and farms continue with full manpower? Oh, probably not. We have nuclear weapons and high tech stuff that is mind boggling. Yet still, it gives one pause. Perhaps we should not commit our country to military engagements that are so large that we do not have the available manpower, unless we are dead serious and willing to commit the nation to those engagements with the kind of manpower needed. That is to say, if you're not willing to draft the men and women needed to carry out such a mission, it's probably not worth draining our resources from home to meet those needs via a back door draft (Calling up the Reserves and National Guard).

Following the logic of that argument, then perhaps it's time to get the heck out of Iraq, (I believe the President is planning for that end sometime next year.) and plan for an end to the mess in Afghanistan without committing more troops. I believe the mess in Afghanistan has spilled over into Pakistan, and is a problem for a lot of nations, not just the U.S. Perhaps the Russians, the Chinese, the Indians could take an interest in stopping the spread of radical Islamic fundamentalism and all that it represents. Perhaps it is enough in their interest that they too will commit a few troops to put the kabash on this mess.

All of that being said, I had a very nice day off from work. I did not celebrate the beginning of the European invasion of the Americas, nor did I partake of a Columbus Day mattress sale. I did, however, take advantage of an extra day off from work. For that I have to thank Chris Columbus. So a Happy Columbus Day to you all.

A Nobel Peace Prize for the President. How About That?

On my way to work this morning I heard that the President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize. Upon arriving at work, I immediately sent Babs an e-mail and told her. I thought about it a moment and knew that I had to tell the Republican across the hall. He constantly regales me with his righty viewpoint and I just thought it would be fun to irritate him a little with the news that the man he would like to see fail is getting respect from the international community (Even if he didn't bring home the Olympics to the U.S.).

The somewhat amazed response to the news, from the Republican across the hall was something on the order of "Grumble, grumble, grumble, don't see a single thing he's done to deserve that. Are the troops out of Iraq? Afghanistan? Grumble, grumble, grumble." It should be noted that he could probably be a competent Republican candidate, as his response falls perfectly in line with what many of the GOP politicians around the country have said. Of course another portion of the GOP elected have taken the President to task as a pursuer of peace because he has failed to jump at the opportunity to build up our troop presence in the Middle East, or put massive numbers of troops on the Iranian border.

One conservative commentator, Erick Erickson on RedState.com went so far as to suggest that Obama won because he was black. His statement went "I did not realize that the Nobel Peace Prize had an affirmative action quota for it, but that is the only thing I can think of for this news." The underlying racism behind a great deal of the criticism of the President becomes ever more obvious.

Apparently the Nobel Prize Committee appreciates that the current President of the "most powerful nation in the world" is winding down the war in Iraq, has not caved into every demand for ever more troops in Afghanistan, and is speaking of focusing on al-qaeda and not the Afghan situation per se. They seem to appreciate that he is open to negotiations and international cooperation rather than sword rattling and "big stick diplomacy." Apparently they appreciate the fact that the world is, on the whole, a safer place with a thinking individual in the White House rather than a man with a cowboy mentality and the idea that America can dictate to the world down the barrel of a gun.

This group, who has chosen to bash the President's recognition in international circles is the same group who just last week waxed ecstatic because he failed to bring home the Olympics for 2016. It is mind-boggling that an honor for our country, and not just for its President, has been bestowed here and the President's detractors attempt to get some political capital from it by further bashing him. The world community has chosen to recognize that our President, and by extension the U.S. as a whole, is trying to make the world a better place to live in, and a safer place at that. And this is reason to criticize him? What planet are these people from?

Even if you believe in your heart of hearts that Mr. Obama has not done enough to deserve this prize, I have to ask you, "In the year 2009, who in the world deserves it more?" Even if you believe in your heart of hearts that he has not done enough to deserve this, isn't it still an honor for him and our country? Doesn't it suggest that the world, as a whole, is a little less hostile toward the U.S.? Doesn't that bode well for our interactions with the rest of the world? Isn't that good opinion from the rest of the world good for us?

To the President's detractors I have to say, "Get over it people!" The economy is better since he was sworn in. Our relations with the rest of the world are better. If those detractors had an ounce of shame in them they would humbly beg forgiveness and say loudly and clearly, "Congratulations Mr. President. We're very proud of you. Now help us show the world that we deserve this honor."

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.

Help Kids Become Productive or Lock Them Up?

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.