If the shoe fits . . .
This story in today’s Chicago Tribune discusses a report that “analyzed arrest numbers from 1999 to 2003 [in Chicago Public Schools], which showed that 75 percent of all children arrested over the five-year period were African-American though they make up 50 percent of the district's enrollment. The district is 38 percent Latinos, who account for 20 percent of arrests.”
Of course, the students think the cops and school employees are just way too strict, and the raw statistics would seem to point to some kind of basic inequality inherent in the system.
The only inherent inequality or disparity I see, from my perspective as a teacher in an on-probation CPS school, is, as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it in The Great Gatsby, “a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.”
When Nick Carraway repeats this snobbish suggestion of his snobbish father, he readily admits that he, like his father before him, is being rather snobbish.
But the fact remains that there are serious social inequalities perpetuated in this country, but these do not start at school. They start in the home. If the student even has a steady, reliable, safe home, which many do not. Without a solid support structure, how are these students supposed to learn how to be decent to each other and to other people?
Every day, I see example after example of young people who either don’t know basic human decency or just don’t care.
Yes, most of the students I see every day are black, but anyone who takes even a simple anecdotal look at just about any other urban school can obviously see that the conditions that lead to these students getting arrested at school are not unique to one ethnic group.
My friend Nathan teaches at a mostly Hispanic (by way of the Dominican Republic) high school in New York City (Harlem, to be exact). He recently sent out a mass email to let all of his friends know how he’s doing. Here is an excerpt:
“One of the most important things I've learned is that girls don't get into physical fights as often as boys, but when they do, there is no limit to their fury. Having had to break up fights of both kinds in the last two weeks, I would choose to separate two boys instead of two girls any day. (it is disturbing to see footlong fistfulls of hair, and torn clothes and scattered bead necklaces as the wreckage of an altercation).”
THIS is why schools like CPS have a zero-tolerance policy. These kids can go from zero to ass-kicking literally in the time it takes to blink. Just yesterday, I had one student slap another full across the face because he had taken a book off of her desk—a classroom book she wasn’t even using at the time.
Oh, one other thing: most of the cops and administrators (that I know of, anyway) in CPS are black, just like the kids who are complaining that the cops and administrators are too handcuff-happy.
This is not a racial thing. This is a socioeconomic thing.
And while we’re on the subject of crime, this link is just too good not to include, even though I know my mother will probably get one or two more gray hairs when she checks out www.Chicagocrime.org.
It’s a Googlemaps hack that maps out crimes reported to the Chicago Police Department. The database is searchable by crime type, street, date, police district, ZIP code, ward, and specific location. I subscribe to the RSS feed of the block my school is on. In the unlikely event that my boss reads this, I don’t want to antagonize anyone by posting the link to my school. But those of you who know where I work can find the address online easily enough.
Of course, the students think the cops and school employees are just way too strict, and the raw statistics would seem to point to some kind of basic inequality inherent in the system.
The only inherent inequality or disparity I see, from my perspective as a teacher in an on-probation CPS school, is, as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it in The Great Gatsby, “a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.”
When Nick Carraway repeats this snobbish suggestion of his snobbish father, he readily admits that he, like his father before him, is being rather snobbish.
But the fact remains that there are serious social inequalities perpetuated in this country, but these do not start at school. They start in the home. If the student even has a steady, reliable, safe home, which many do not. Without a solid support structure, how are these students supposed to learn how to be decent to each other and to other people?
Every day, I see example after example of young people who either don’t know basic human decency or just don’t care.
Yes, most of the students I see every day are black, but anyone who takes even a simple anecdotal look at just about any other urban school can obviously see that the conditions that lead to these students getting arrested at school are not unique to one ethnic group.
My friend Nathan teaches at a mostly Hispanic (by way of the Dominican Republic) high school in New York City (Harlem, to be exact). He recently sent out a mass email to let all of his friends know how he’s doing. Here is an excerpt:
“One of the most important things I've learned is that girls don't get into physical fights as often as boys, but when they do, there is no limit to their fury. Having had to break up fights of both kinds in the last two weeks, I would choose to separate two boys instead of two girls any day. (it is disturbing to see footlong fistfulls of hair, and torn clothes and scattered bead necklaces as the wreckage of an altercation).”
THIS is why schools like CPS have a zero-tolerance policy. These kids can go from zero to ass-kicking literally in the time it takes to blink. Just yesterday, I had one student slap another full across the face because he had taken a book off of her desk—a classroom book she wasn’t even using at the time.
Oh, one other thing: most of the cops and administrators (that I know of, anyway) in CPS are black, just like the kids who are complaining that the cops and administrators are too handcuff-happy.
This is not a racial thing. This is a socioeconomic thing.
And while we’re on the subject of crime, this link is just too good not to include, even though I know my mother will probably get one or two more gray hairs when she checks out www.Chicagocrime.org.
It’s a Googlemaps hack that maps out crimes reported to the Chicago Police Department. The database is searchable by crime type, street, date, police district, ZIP code, ward, and specific location. I subscribe to the RSS feed of the block my school is on. In the unlikely event that my boss reads this, I don’t want to antagonize anyone by posting the link to my school. But those of you who know where I work can find the address online easily enough.
posted by Christopher at
8:25 PM
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