|
Enlightening,
and perplexing, all the discussion about development on Lake Street,
and that,
-obviously- some don't like it as they
criticize and beat up on the positive forces, the people doing
it.
Anyone
or group doing positive things in the community are always going to be
criticized,
-backlashes and
frontlashes.
The
school thing, though, is not so enlightening. As resident and
property owner I have heard contiuous string of stories coming out of the
schools -from kids, and kids' mothers about the awful state of things
in the schools, all the while every few elections there is a big issue on the
ballot and we are told 'its for the kids'.
Everything but learning and discipline, I have heard. That junior highs
were solid drugs and not just pot either -that by senior high drugs were
passee, they had all 'done that'. That kids loiter in and
out during class time, that teachers have lost control as they don't want
the bearish mother coming in threatening to sue -and with attorney in
tow with big settlement in his eyes.
I know
of a once pretty young girl who -on basis of a paper she wrote, got scholarship
to Breck- though was already getting pulled down by peer groups beating her up
if she wouldn't 'participate'. She was knocked up by a
neighborhood (Chicago Lake area) crack head who would then come over on
'Mother's day', beat her up, get her welfare money plus whatever else like AC he
could sell for $15 and don't see him again till next month, -the
police not dealing with that sort of
thing.
Of course,
unless you are a property owner with a tenant calling to tell the problems her
kid is having, you don't hear that kind of stuff until its three years
past.
You'll pardon
me if I don't read all this about the public schools. I know the private
schools have merit and also most schools out in the burbs.
James E
Jacobsen
'Whittier'
|
