Being born in the ghetto = "being born into a version of genocide"?

Great Debates
61

I think that the biggest problem with the ghetto is the fact that it exists in the first place. If you have teenage mothers, drunkards, drug dealers etc. in a neighborhood with other role models, and authority figures then you have a managable problem. If you have a neighborhood of teenage mothers, drunkards, drug dealers etc. then you simply have a disaster. As others have said in this thread have said, if all you see is bad behavior then you will engage in that bad behavior. Beyond that, by collecting poor people in one area, that area is neglected by the economy and the government. Why would a business locate itself in a ghetto? It has a crappy workforce to draw from, and the people surrounding it have no money to spend. Why would the government spend money in a place that doesn’t hold any political power?

The things that even sven mentioned certainly would help life in the ghetto. But shouldn’t the goal be to eliminate the ghetto, instead of just ameliorating life in it? Note, I didn’t say that we had to eliminate poverty, becuase there will always be poor people. What we need to eliminate is the neighborhoods with high crime, poor policing, high unemployement, and no role models that generate the next generation of criminals and gangbangers.

For example, read Manda JO’s post again. She can make up for poor parenting by providing guidance for a childs education. But she is human, and has limited resources. If say, 5% of her students need assistance with scholarships and such she can help them. But when you concentrate all of those kids that need assistance in one place without providing extraordinary assistance they get glossed over. She has no shot of helping everyone if 95% of her students need that help.

Thats just defining the problem, as for solutions, well I don’t really know. In a capatilistic system you always will have poor areas and rich areas. Everyone wants to live in the most desirable area. Those that can afford the desirable areas will live there, those that can’t will be forced to live in the less desirable area. In my opinion, thats the fundamental problem becuase it causes the ghettos to exist. But what can you do about it? Abadoning capitalism isn’t the answer, forcing people to live in a certain area definately isn’t the answer, and giving poor the money to live in rich areas isn’t feasible.

What can be done even sven touched on. Building projects was a complete disaster, and should never be done again. That just simply concentrated the bad influences that I went over in my first post into one area, and along with other factors inherent with the project, exacerbated the effect of those bad influences. Putting the low income housing in the areas with the resources to handle them would be the best solution. Thats would do a great deal to fix the problem, but fat chance getting low income housing built in tuxedo park.

I don’t want to discount the structural problems that even sven gave solutions to, but I think the cultural problems are much more important. What she said about reproductive health care I agree with 110% though, and I can’t overemphasize how important it is. Teenage parents are simply a disaster, especially those that themselves were raised in the ghetto. They themselves are ill-equiped to live in the world, let alone raising another person. With teenage parents you just don’t have the necessary skill, or ability to effectively control youth. There is no one to stop them from skipping school, gang banging or other deliquency.

However, for some of the other things she mentioned the culture problems dwarf the structure problems. It doesn’t matter how good of a school you have if 80% of kids are dropping out. It doesn’t matter if you have bus lines to better employment oppurtunities if 80% of the people don’t have highschool degrees. The schools, and other programs that are there now suck in comparison to other schools in the country, but they aren’t completely useless. The problem has much more to do with the lack of value placed on education, and the legitimate mode of success in the ghetto.

The solution to that problem has to come within the community. Compared with parents, friends and other close social contacts, social workers and teachers have very little influence. If studying brings scorn from friends, and family it doesn’t matter how much praise a teacher gives. This should be pretty clear to everyone, if your friends and family value, or disapprove of something its very hard to go against that. For example, if you dress like a punk kid and your family and friends approve of that, what do you care if a teacher says anything?

In terms of avoiding crime, and dealing with gangs thats another tough problem. You can’t simply arrest everyone in the gang, and put them in jail becuase a lot of the kids are involved with gangs. Its a self perpetuating problem, kids join gangs becuase they need protection from other gangs. They join gangs becuase thats what social life is based around. Breaking that cycle is tough and I don’t know how to do it.

62

the raindog, this thread is not carried forward by making your disagreement with Blake personal.

If you have been watching long enough to discern his style of posting, then either ignore any quirks that you perceive in his style or go holler at him in the Pit, but don’t drag personal critiques into threads in GD.

63

Sorry if this is coming in late but isn’t “hard work” as a means to raising your prospects in life self evident? How can anyone miss this? Even those good enough at basketball to make it to the NBA worked hard to get that good and make it an option. I simply cannot buy the notion that poor people have no concept of “hard work”. Barring winning the lottery how does anyone think it can be otherwise? Even if it is not thought of explicitly in terms of, “hard work will get me a middle class lifestyle” everyone at some point thinks to themself, “I really would like it if I had ‘X’…how can I get it?” (“X” being whatever you like that you do not have). One way or another it is intuitively known you have to work for “X” whether it is selling drugs, stealing it, getting a job at McDonalds or going to school so you can get an even better job at some point.

That the poor have a much more difficult mountain to climb than those more fortunate than themselves I understand. There are a myriad of obstacles in their way to breaking the poverty cycle, many of which are beyond their control and in some cases might even be insurmountable no matter what they do. As a society the task should be to remove those roadblocks as much as possible but in the end the individual needs to do the work to move themself down the road to a better life.

64

Well said treis. I wish I’d said that.

Actually I wish I’d thought of that. Talking about trying to solve the problems of the ghetto seems silly when you relaise that they could almost all be solved if we could simply get rid of the ghetto. Get the people out and intersperse them with the general population.

65

Whack-a-mole I wasn’t suggesting that poor people have no concept of hard work. If you read my post I was pointing out that if you have never seen anyone succeed by working hard you simply won’t think of hard work as a solution. If you have never seen anyone get X by hard work why would you immediately include hard work as the answer to the question “how can I get it?"?

That’s the fundamental problem. It’s not intuitively known that hard work gets you X if nobody has ever achieved X by hard work. Seriously, when you were 15 and horny and wanted a girlfreind/boyfriend did you actually say “I really want a girlfriend, I’ll have to go and work hard to get that?”. I know I certainly never, nor did anyone I know. That’s because nobody has ever seen hard work succeed in getting a partner for a teenager.
Everybody may know that hard work is a solution to specific problems but we also know that it doesn’t solve all problems. So how do we decide what problems it can solve and what problems it can’t? Initially by looking at people who work hard and seeing whether they don’t have those problems. If nobody you have ever seen solved a problem by working hard why would you choose to solve that problem through hard work?

It may not be the best analogy but imagine that your partner/mother was diagnosed with a completely untreatable terminal disease. Upon hearing the diagnosis would you honestly respond by thinking “I really would like it if I had a healthy partner/mother. I know, I’ll go and work hard to find a cure”? Of course you wouldn’t, that’s because experience has taught you that no amount of hard work on your part will produce a cure. You know that some people somewhere can produce a cure through hard work, but people like you can’t. Hard work is not a way to get what you want in this case. And as odd as it seems when a poor kid thinks “I really wish I had respect and security” he often doesn’t consider hard work any more likely to get that than it is to cure his dying mother. He knows that some people somewhere can gain respect and security through hard work, but people like him can’t.

And of course everyone knows sportsmen have to work hard. The difference is that those sportsmen really came from the same system so you know that working hard at sports is a possible way to success. Hard work at study, who has that ever worked for? Hard manual work? Who has that ever worked for. Even if these kids know a handful of people it worked for, so what? I know a handful of people who made money through Amway. That doesn’t mean that I seriously believe selling Amway is a path to success. And quite frankly a lot of these kids know fewer people who got rich through hard work outside sport/entertainment than I know people who got rich through Amway. And I don’t immediately think of selling Amway as a solution to a problem.

Think about it for a moment. In an average week how many people can the average kid see on TV who were once poor (and let’s confine it to minority) and who are now successful? A dozen or more? And how many became successful through studying or manual labour? None?

66

Might this result in gentrification where the poorer people may find it prohibitively expensive to remain in their homes due to property taxes and are displaced by wealthier people?

Do they have such laws to begin with? I’ve never heard of one but then it isn’t like I know much about zoning laws to begin with.

Where does this occur?

Marc

67

I am thinking about it and frankly I am still not entirely getting it.

Are you suggesting that the kids who see actors assume those actors did not have to work to get there? Certainly successful athletes busted their asses to get to where they are and I’d wager the vast majority of all those people got where they are through school. Yes, athletes might skate by on the academics but until very recently I am not sure there was an NBA player who didn’t ultimately have to graduate from high school and make it to college (and at one point graduate from there too). Most actors who are successful went to school and college as well. Pop musicians who make it big are the only exception I see.

Does a poor kid only see the success and none of what it took those people to get where they are? Does a poor kid assume that the millions of middle class Americans only got that way (not to mention maintain that lifestyle) because it is all just handed to them? Do they not know that their prospects in life are hugely diminished without a high school diploma and that a college diploma is an even better route to a better life? Do they not know that once you have a diploma you need to get a job?

I think they might well look down the road and decide the roadblocks are just too high to overcome and not try or opt for the “gold ring” and hope they will make it as a rock star. I do not think, however, that they do not understand this.

68

Two considerations.

  1. Very few actors came from the ghetto or are known to have come from poverty. Offhand I can think of Bill Cosby and Kirk Douglas. Neither of whom are household names in da hood. SO whether actors had to work or not is largely irrelevant. The only real question is did the actors from the ghetto have to work. And since there aren’t any actors aren’t; emulated. The same way as successful politicians aren’t emulated, and for the same reasons.
  2. These kids don’t assume, they know that actors didn’t have to work at trigonometry or the exports of Chile to get there. So what possible advantage could these kids perceive in studying?

I have never heard it suggested that poor kids work any less hard at becoming entertainers than rich kids. Quite the opposite. But that doesn’t translate in any way into working hard at school.

No, not at all. It’s simply a different world and totally irrelevant to them.

When I was a kid I thought about middle class Americans exactly the same way I thought about the President. Seriously I viewed them exactly the same way. I didn’t think that Reagan or Carter got that way because it was all just handed to them. I knew they had worked their arses off for 30 years or more to get that way. But I also knew that I couldn’t get that way no matter how hard I worked. And I thought about the middle classes exactly the same way. There was a total disconnect between their world and mine. I always assumed they worked hard, but a belief that if I worked hard I would get there was no more reasonable than a belief that if I worked hard I could become President.

As I said in my first post, this can be hard to grasp if you haven’t been there. But everyone who has been there will tell you the same thing. Can you remember how you thought about the Presidents as a kid? Did you think they got that way because it is all just handed to them? Did you really think that if you worked hard you could become president? Maybe you did. But even if you did I’m sure that you realise now that such a belief was preposterous. For all that Presidents work hard to become president you know that your kids can never become President. And in exactly the same way poor kids know that for all middle class people work hard they also know that they will never become middle class through hard work. It simply is not an option.

Yep, and that’s the tragedy.

Children under 13 can’t realistically know those sorts pf things, nor do the have the skills required to work towards those goal s unguided even if they do.

So you take a 13 year old with serious literacy and numeracy problems as most of these kids do.

Then you develop his brain to the level where he realises that the chances of a child with an unstable home life attending an inner city school catching up with 12 years of education in 5 years is about the same chance as being kicked to death by a duck.

Then you let him know that his prospects in life are hugely diminished without a high school diploma. He can’t do anything about that. He knows the chances of a child with serious literacy problems getting a diploma before he turns 18 is almost nil. But you make him realise that his prospects in life are hugely diminished without a high school diploma. In essence you tell him he has no future.

The you leave him in an environment with lots of other kids who realise they have no future. Guess what happens?

The problems is that only teenagers can truly understand that they need an education and only teenagers can work without guidance. But by the time these kids are teenagers it’s all over. The damage has been done. You can’t start as a 13yo with 3rd grade reading skills and hope to finish college. It’s a pipe dream.

These kids realise all to well they have no future without a high school diploma. There’s just very little they can do to change that at the age of 13 or 15 or whenever they realise.

Being an emotionally damaged, impoverished, 13yo child with no home life basically is a roadblock that’s too high to overcome.

No of course they understand. It would be easier, or at least less tragic, if they didn’t understand.

As a teenager I certainly knew the value of education. But there were subjects I struggled at. I knew I had to do better at those subjects. I knew I had to work to do better at those subjects and I was prepared to work. But I had no idea how to go about doing better. It’s one thing for a 14 year old to know he has to do better at math and be prepared to but how exactly does he go about doing better? Nobody in my family had studied that level of mathematics. They couldn’t help me. Simply being prepared to work hard won’t make a concept suddenly make sense when you have no starting point. I could stare at a page for hours, but that doesn’t make it magically make sense.

So in that case what should I have done? I realised the value of education. I was prepared to work hard. I knew I was failing the subject. So what? How does that knowledge solve the problem? Simply knowing you have a problem and being prepared to work doesn’t automatically solve the problem. You have to have options available to solve the problem. And poor kids largely have none.

69

cool

70

With all due respect to Blake, I believe his approach and attititude towards the poor/inner city is no different than the last 40 years of The Great Society. I think there is a general tendency to consider the poor more helpless and dumber than they really are.

I don’t believe the poor need anyone from the outside teaching them anything. Sure, they can’t conceive the path to the presidency, but neither can I.

I don’t believe for one moment that the average poor person is unaware that woking hard can get you at least somewhere. And the viewpoint that they don’t know that, ironically, is one that actually hurts the poor.

If you set low expectations for me-----implicitly or explictly, in a subtle way or overtly—I will deliver, on a subconcious level, those results. A study was done where some school teachers were told that a few students had scored very high on some specilaized tests and were ‘gifted.’ They tracked the teacher and over time the kids (who were not gifted and had taken no such test) test scores were significantly above the average.

I think that the government or outside influences should have little direct involvement in the community. It is the people of the community who are their own biggest enemies. The good news is that they are in the best position to help themselves.

That is not a prescription for “pull your self up by your bootstrap Republicanism.” But rather that it is not the outsiders who will help the inner city. It is the people of the inner city themselves that are the key to their future.

Without a doubt, it is harder—much harder—for an inner city youth to conceive a clear future path. But it is up to that young person, their parents (if they have concerned parents) and their community to address to ensure his future. *But it possible.
*
magellan01 hit the nail on the head:

Those are real life issues that play out every single day in the inner city, and no outside help is going to change it. It has to come from within.

If it doesn’t, the reality that furlibusea sees every day will continue. And the fact is, by the time the poor in high school it’s likely too late. When they’re not reading at grade level in 2nd, 3rd grade—that’s when the individual needs to be involved. And that’s not an outsider’s job.

The biggest outsider has been the federal government. Just look at government policy (just one form of outside help, and of course the biggest) over the last 40 years. We absolutely destroyed neighborhoods, often bulldozing them in favor of massive building projects like Cabrini Green, Robert Taylor and the Henry Horner homes in Chicago. We had good intentions but it was nothing more than building concrete ghettos. In an attempt to teach the African American poor we further destroyed the neighborhoods by forced bussing.

That doesn’t mean that the government shouldn’t have a role

  1. Prosecute predatory lenders
  2. Monitor/prosecute redlining practices
  3. Maintain the roads & sidewalks
  4. Community based policing, including foot patrols
  5. Maintain the schools (physical plant)
  6. Tax abatement zones for business establishment
  7. Enforce housing standards
  8. Make low income loans available to home owners for repairs
  9. Police enforcement of all laws, including nuicance crimes
  10. School vouchers

But it is not the job of outsiders to teach Jonhny to read (outside of his parents and his neighborhood school) nor is it the job of outsiders to show Johnny a role model or career path. Nor should most of these kids be concerning themselves with being the next NBA star, actor or president.

I submit that people will generally live up to expectations that you set for them. If you think the best of them, they will often respond in kind. If you hold them accountable, they will respond. If you think they’re clueless and need to be saved, they’ll generally behave like a victim.

71

For those interested in this subject, there is a fascinating book called “Comeback Cities.” I can’t find it at the moment but it is written by a couple guys who studied cities extensively.

They have a huge bias in favor of Community Development Corporations. They tell, in some detail, many extremely positive stories----going on now—of people who are making a difference in their own communities.

I highly recommend it if you’re interested.

Virtually all of the success stories are about ordinary, uneducated working poor who have come together to reshape their neighborhood. In every case they have succeeded by sheer determination and a desire to make their neighborhhod a better place. Along the way, they have learned the politics and have educated themselves on what resources are available out there, and have been fairly politically adroit along the way.

But it is them, in their own community, who have taken control of their neighborhoods. Have they transormed them into Eden? Of course not.

But their neighborhoods are safer, cleaner and more enjoyable to live in then before. The kids are safer and have a more stable enviornment.

It’s a good read.

72

And…I apologize to Blake.

73

Its also possible for them to spontaneously break out into a broadway dance number. Doesn’t mean its likely to happen. If you want to sit here and wait for the ghetto to heal itself, by all means do so but you are going to be here for a very long time. The forces I mentioned previously, and that others have mentioned are very powerful. Too powerful, in my opinion, for any change to come from within the ghetto.

I don’t disagree with you that change has to come from within the community. The difference is that I think you can change what the community is. Tisk tisking the people in the ghetto for not improving while constantly dumping the worse element of society onto them is putting unrealistic requirements on them. You have congregated the people least able to succeed in society into the worst possible enviroment, and then you expect them to help themselves?

I have no problem with saying that the people in the ghetto need to change, I reject the notion that the ghetto is somehow beyond our ability to fix, or even that the ghetto is not society’s fault.

Actually, the Robert Taylor homes and other projects weren’t initially bad places to live. Its only after the CHA stopped screening applicants, and maintaining a balance of working class and poor people, that the ghetto started to form.

74

That would actually be my point. Ineffective polocuy doesn’t help anyone. So you may as well concentrate on the things you can help with. But means accepting that your actual power in the whole affair is distinctly limited, and that you can only make opportunity, not force opportunity.

That would also be my point. Theory and practice. How do you tell bureaucrats to “inspire people”? How do you find out if they are, without taking a decade or two to watch the outcomes?

Government neccessarily means bureaucracy or corruption. Pick one (sometimes both). If you pick bureaucracy, you must have a crystal-clear objective, measurable goals, and concrete procedures. Otherwise you get treading in water.

It doesn’t matter if they have the opportunity if they don’t choose to do it, either. And opportunity is a lot easier to find than will. A child, even in a bad situation, can make or ask for opportunity. It’s not even that hard, and I have no problem with government meeting that need if neccessary. But making that available doesn’t change anything itself.

75

Here I must strongly dissagree. Here in my town, the vouchers are killing us. Good parents, who would fight for a school are siphoned off. Kids are moving schools three and four times a year as people shop for the better school, but no one has an investment in making the school better. Our school system has become the rental property. The choice schools are unregulated, and don’t have to do any of the testing or any of the accountablity checks the public schools do. In a couple of cases, the public has been robbed blind.

The choice schools, as they are implemented here, don’t even have to have teachers with any kind of certification or training whatsoever. I remember one day when I was delivering mail (one of my previous professions) and I saw this sign in the window of one of the store front choice schools. It was obviously writen by an adult. It said, “Are schools are the best.” I will grant that my spelling is awful, but…

Charter and choice schools here do not have to take special ed students, nor do they have to take the non english speaking students. For this, they get 1000 dollars more per student than the public schools get, but we have more and more of the expensive students. At this point my school is 30% special ed, 95% African-American. The rest of the non African-American students are assorted African and South Asian first generation immigrants.

As vouchers have been implemented here, they further ghettoize the schools. We are left with less resources to deal with the children of drugs, lead, and abuse. Many of our kids have no idea what hard work looks like, hell, they have no idea what a functional family looks like.

And yet… Some, very few, but some, will make it. It is for those little miracles we keep going.

76

How are the kids doing. As far as the overall community goes, are more kids going to college? Are test scores up or down?

77

The voucher schools don’t have to test, so who the hell knows with them. In the public schools, the tests are supposedly staying the same. The schools that were doing well, are still doing well, and the schools that were failing are still failing.

I am guessing that with how often we have kids in and out of the private schools, the ones that were real schools before this government money give away, are feeling the same chaos we feel, and the fly by night opperations are getting their money so they don’t care. Supposedly they will have to start testing as part of some new agreement, and the schools who get money are starting next year supposed to turn in actual plans and stuff.

78

I agree with that. I fact it’s pretty much the point I’ve been making all along. We can only provide opportunities so we should be doing our best to provide those opportunities.

Of course no matter what we do we run into the same problem.

Let’s take treis’ excellent suggestion to dismantle the ghettos and disperse the people. How do you find out if that has in any way mitigated the problem without taking a decade or two to watch the outcomes?

It doesn’t matter what you suggest doing, there is no way to find out if it works without taking a decade or two to watch the outcomes. Providing moral support is no different.

I’m not quite that cynical, but I’ll accept the broadest thrust of your argument.

I agree. That’s why we find out why these people feel detached and abandoned and set out set out to remove those things as crystal-clear objective, measurable goals, with concrete procedures. Sven has mentioned numerous social conditions that contribute to this feeling of alienation that could easily be delat with in the manner you describe.

I totally disagree. In my experience will is much easier to find, especially amongst young and pre-teen children. It is the opportunity that is impossible to find.

And as I pointed out above these kids can’t ask for the opportunity because they simply don’t understand the opportunity exists. You can’t ask for something that you are totally unaware of. It’s impossible.

No, of course it doesn’t. Just as if we could somehow provide the will that would change nothing if the opportunity to act on it simply does not exist.

I think we are both in agreement that we need the will and the opportunity simultaneously. The difference is that experience teaches me that these kids have no shortage of will until reality sets in during their mid-teens. Mid-late teens have no will because they are resigned to their fate. Younger children have limitless amounts of will and no opportunities.

You apparently think that these kids have no will to learn form the first day they enter school. Of course I can’t prove you are incorrect, but experience tells me that you are.

79

In fact I do. Before I get to that statement I’d like the people who have screwed up their communities to get out. I’d like all the social engineers and beurocrats to simply get out.

Their environment is a product of 40 years of good intentioned incompetence.

The ghetto is in fact partly society’s fault. Now it’s now “not somehow behond our ability to fix?” We’re the ones who broke it!

Look at Katrina: In the immediate aftermath, WalMart, FedEx and many other companies were on the ground running. Individual business owners, including a guy who owned some hotels, were mobilized and already assessing damage and securing properties. Many of them were beginning to bring in materials, including life support materials,within hours of the hurricane.

Where was FEMA? Now we have helicopters hovering over acres and acres of empty trailers paid with tax dollars. It’s been estimated that up to 40% of the people who received $2000 debit cards weren’t victims of Katrina. Forty percent of 600 million dollars.

Look at the federal government’s track record over the last 40 years.

That’s akin to asking the court for mercy because I’m an orphan after killing my parents. The CHA’s mismanagement was so bad that a federal court, at HUDs request, took over the CHA.

The CHA had a 50 year track record of corupution and mismanagement. What gets overlooked is that there was in fact many stable working class neighborhoods in places like Chicago that got bulldozed for the concrete jungles that got built.

If the Robert Taylor homes were a good place to live it was while the paint was drying. For the most of the existence of those projects they were a blight on humanity. The CHA was a shining example of what happened all over the country. It would have been better if CHA had screened better? But what did they actually do?

The government wants to build a library? cool. Streets/sidewalks/new schools? great. Enforce buidling codes/ get rid of slumlords? fantastic. Step up police, including the nuisance crimes? I’m giddy. And so many other things the government can do.

Project Dare? The results are in: abject failure. Silly PSA spots on TV with people like Benjamin Bratt reminding us to be good parents? get serious. Life tutors to teach little Johnny how to think non ghetto fabulous? Not a chance.

No Child Left Behind? Just watch, it will die an ignominious death.
I’m not looking to argue. In all sincerity, what would you do to fix this?

80

furlibusea
I agree with you—I think the charter schools have a spotty record. In my areas there has been some controversy recently and some of them have been forced to close.

I also think the charter schools/vouchers will undermine the public schools in the inner city. And I know the public schools get a lot of grief.

I don’t believe they deserve a fraction of the grief they get. If the NY Yankees want to move to your hometown your tax payers will approve a bazillion dollar levy to build them a state of the art stadium. You’ll then spend $25 for a bleacher ticket and $6.50 for a beer for the next 30 years to pay off that stadium. But the school levy on the same ballot usually gets rejected.

Further, the ballplayer batting .195 and sitting on the bench will make $1.2M while Johnny’s teacher makes $40K.

I’m in favor of school vouchers not to get rid of my local school, but to separate my kids from my neighbor’s kids. Forty years ago Johnny was more likely to be fed, clean, from a 2 parent home, who’s average age was 7, 8 or more years older than the current parents, less likely to be from a drug environment, less likely to be in trouble with the law, less likely to be a teen parent—and the list goes on and on and on.

Yet while I hear TONS of criticism about schools, and the teachers union, I have NEVER heard a commentary that acknowledged that the teachers are getting poorer and poorer and poorer raw material to work with.

And for the life of me, I don’t know that the answer is. I was willing to stick it out after my garage was broken into and lawnmower stolen. I even stayed when they moved to the house and stole about $5000 worth of stuff. I came home and found a car in my driveway (the garage is in the back) and some commerce of a sexual nature was being conducted. I even let my brother store a 1968 Pontiac in my garage. (I never use the garage) I opened the garage to show the car to a guy who wanted to buy it and I found a guy sleeping in the car. He had been breaking in every night through a loose board in the back and had been living in the car for weeks. (How well would you sleep knowing somone was sleeping 30 feet from your daughters?) I found the same guy stripping the car one night at midnight, on a hunch he was still breaking in to sleep. (I had been nice to him the first time I found him. He won’t be back now…)

But I should lay my kids at the altar of mediocrity and insolence? I’m sorry, I can’t. I have the highest regard for teachers. I’ve seen them work well into the evening and routinely spend their own money in their classroom.

And I feel like I’m abandoning them. And maybe I am. But it’s a no win situation for my kids. They won’t benefit from this environment—and can only suffer. And it’s not only suffering academically. There is an issue of safety, behavior and morals. It’s not the school, even if it’s hardly state of the art. It’s not the teachers. It’s the kids—I hate to say it but it’s the kids.

As much as I would like to hang in there, I cannot sacrifice my kids.