At Flower Mound High School's recent open
house, it became clear that I would run out of seats as
caring, dedicated parents filed in. They listened with
rapt attention to the course details projected by my LCD
projector from my school-based Web site for my AP junior
English class. As happens every year, time ran out before
I could get to all the their questions, inquiries that
reflected their commitment to their children's academic
success and concerns about acceptance at top universities.
Fifteen
hundred miles to the east, in Washington, D.C., my daughter
Shelby, having graduated from college a scant five months
earlier, also readied her classroom in anticipation of
meeting the parents of her freshman biology students. Her
textbooks are old, ripped and graffitied, and she has supplied
paper and pencils for her students who come in empty-handed.
She has no chalk, no technology (other than her own laptop)
and minimal lab equipment. She's spent $300 of her own
money because the school lacks a functioning copy machine.
She has 98 students; eight parents showed up.
What's the
difference between the two schools? Is it the money we
spend? No. Texas public schools on average spend less than
$8,000 per student a year, and Flower Mound High School
sends close to 90 percent of its graduates to college.
Washington,
D.C., schools spend over $15,000 per student and graduate
less than 60 percent of their students.
In every ranking
of school districts, the D.C. public schools rank near
the bottom in the nation, so one has to ask where the money
is being spent. It's not classroom teachers' salaries,
since beginning salaries in D.C. are lower than those in
Dallas, nor is it school supplies, textbooks or technology.
But
there is a commonality of the troubled areas: cities. What
is it about cities? What is happening there that puts their
rising generation at such risk? As everywhere, it must
start with the parents.
During a conference Shelby had with
one of her students' parents, the mother responded that
she wasn't responsible for her son. "Oh, I'm sorry," my daughter responded, assuming
that her student was living with another relative. "Then
who is?"
"Well, I feed him, but he's responsible for his own life,
not me." Shelby was dumbfounded. This is not an isolated
case – my daughter phones the homes of 10 or more
students every night, usually between 6:30 and 8:30 p.m.,
and rarely finds a parent who thinks he or she can effect
change with a teenage child.
What has happened to the American
idea of self-reliance? Clearly, it is rooted in rural areas
of the U.S., where farmers have always known that only
through daily hard work can they yield their crops. We
also see self-reliance in suburbs like Flower Mound, a
middle-class community of people who have decided to be
successful and have raised their children to be contributors,
not dependents. But it is largely absent in the cities,
where, since the 1960s, we have bred multiple generations
to believe that the responsibility for their personal happiness,
or at least their survival, belongs to some form of government
agency.
The social programs that were created out of conscience
have actually curtailed personal motivation; we have amputated
our city youths' concept of free will, leaving a residue
of entitlement without accountability.
Their home lives
are insecure and inconsistent, and they all know kids who
have died violent deaths. With students roaming the halls
all day and teachers not allowed to fail students who don't
try, schools become an extension of the battlefield and
hypocrisy of the streets.
The seeds of independence still
exist, however dormant, and become the reasons urban teachers
go to work every day. Shelby has her Brandon, who reads
at a third- or fourth-grade level, but who comes to see
her every day after school so that he can compensate for
his inadequate educational background.
We need to celebrate
the ambition of these self-motivated, albeit rare students;
it is their inner drive that we need to parade as an example
for the underachievers. They'll succeed despite the excuses
to fail that are being offered to them.
It's time to get
serious about our urban crisis so the millions of city
youths don't become part of a self-perpetuating welfare
generation who stays uneducated and without dreams.
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