Shooting Ourselves in the Foot, Part 4

    

 There is a point concerning education reform that I will take every opportunity to reinforce. That point is this: The causes for students failing in our public schools are more related to socio-economic conditions in the homes and communities of these children than they are to the quality of instructions the children are receiving in schools. Vibrant communities with vibrant households always have vibrant schools that produce students with high achievement. Don’t take my word for it. Just visit the communities of the best schools in your state and you will immediately observe excellent quality of lives that is evident in the well maintained homes, businesses, parks, recreational areas, and streets; and most prominent in the efficient government services, and impressive modern renovated schools. In these communities pride between the public schools and the citizens is a two-way street: The traffic of affection flows both ways. The schools love their citizens and the citizens love their schools. But more importantly, however, the socio-economic conditions in the households are such that it allows parents to be the chief facilitators in their children’s achievement. Private lessons in dance, music, sports; private tutoring in curriculum classes and college prep exams; and rich arrays of after-school and summer activities in sports, music, drama . . . always with parental involvement, are evidence of this.

   In the communities of failing schools, liquor stores are very prominent on the street corners. Abandon buildings, run-down apartments, graffiti-covered-everything, gun and dope transactions are the prominent features on every rat infested, pot-hole crumbling street, with their cracked side-walks of protruding weeds. The only thing that is higher than unemployment in these communities is the misery index, which buries itself in crack cocaine, heroin, liquor bottles, domestic abuse, drive-bys, and ― early graves. Parks and recreational areas display “Off-Limits” and “Closed” signs. And everyone is profiled for his potential to become imprisoned for the purpose of providing profits to the corporations, which own the jails. In these communities, pride is a fantasy; staying alive is a hope; a better life is a distant dream, and discrimination and subjugation are the realities. A school is just another run-down building, of overcrowded classrooms, where teachers try desperately to succeed against all the insurmountable odds I just mentioned.  In some cases the do; in many cases they do not, at which time their classroom instructions are given the blame.

   I spent 24 years of my life in the United States Army as an active duty soldier (24/7). I believed that I was fighting to make the United States of America better for all Americans ― especially its children! Today, in old age, I write about it because I must. I write while praying to God.

    I am confident that He will intervene. 

By

James A. Porter