In a message dated 05/21/2000 5:43:07 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< > The majority of young males who were my students in the South Bronx said
they
> didn't expect to live beyond 21. Now that's sad. They sussed out that
society
> had no slots for them and wasn't interested in their lives, except to keep
> them in check.
Who is telling them that society is interested in anyone's life? The interest
must go the other way. The tragedy for the jaded is that such a reaction to
the
world must arise from a disinterest in it. What force is causing
people--kids and
adults--to be bored with the infinite range of sensory and abstract
experience
that their embodiment offers? The world is large, large as it's ever been.
Only
the obedient, I think, are ever bored, and gangbangers in the South Bronx,
thinking only on death, are being obedient in their own ways. >>
What they perceive, and by "they" I certainly don't mean every student I ever
had, but a disturbing number of kids from impoverished situations, usually
only one parent often on welfare, some from alcoholic/drug addiction
parent/guardian situations, some from a single parent (mother usually) who
worked hard but made little money . . . the usual stereotype situations for
9th grade kids with low reading/writing skills, low verbal skills . . . kids
who live a lot of their lives on the street-- they perceive a world where
cops are suspicious of their very existence, where there's not much economic
opportunity for them, where no one seems to care what happens to them. They
generally don't have the money for access (except thru crime, if they choose
that route, or drug dealing if they choose that route--though I must say,
most of the students I'm talking about didn't choose crime or drugs dealing)
to the "stuff" they see pushed at them constantly on tv and billboards, they
feel alienated from mainstream society -- even moreso because they don't have
verbal skills to navigate the society -- and they see their peers either
dying off of being routed to jail at an enormous rate. They feel frustrated
and hopeless by the time they reach high school, and it's very difficult to
motivate them.
In some ways I think Hillary is right, it does take a village to raise a
child, and these kids perceive that the village doesn't care about them as
much as it cares about others. I think it's really difficult for us to
imagine what it's like to be raised in that kind of alienating environment.
It's not the gangbangers I'm talking about.
