------------------------------------------------
Community Forum on Job Shadowing in
St. Paul High Schools May 17 - 28
http://www.stpauljobshadow.org
------------------------------------------------In a message dated 5/23/2004 10:52:45 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
writes:
> Everyone I grew up with that didn't get killed or get
> sent to jail graduated high school, and many of us
> went on to college.
>
> What is different today? What happened?
I'd suggest that the last 36 years of conservative government has turned a nation that
was focused on ending poverty and truly having equal opportunity for all into a nation
that blames the poor for their plight and lives in more separation and fear than in
anytime in our history.
The "Silent Majority" took over in 1968 and hasn't let go of its strangle hold on the
government since. It turned a war on poverty into a war on drugs that has been
highlighted by an ever increasing number of young men entering the prison system. In
1972 it gave up on the notion of young men being able to be reformed by reducing the
age of majority from 21 to 18 (yes you couldn't go to prison until you were 21 back in
the good old days of white picket fences). And, now they scream for 12 year olds to
be tried as adults. It turned a prison system that was rehabilitation based (parole
boards that determined discharge after successfully completing inside programming)
into determinate sentencing (Minnesota in 1978) "do the crime do the time" became
their mantra. Ever increasing lengths of sentences followed. Now with studies that
show almost one in three minority males will spend some time in custody, you have a
group of children who now grow up seeing incarceration as a "normal" part of life
passage, and many of them visit prisons.
Their gospel of "what's in it for me?" led to a mass exodus from the cities to
suburbia (we once called it "white flight" we don't talk about it anymore). They
attacked the notion of public transportation and created a massive subsidy instead for
their suburban highway and freeway systems to improve their way of life. They billed
the central cities to pay for their needs for public water and sewer systems.
They now get to send their children to lily white schools in suburbia with fellow
upwardly mobile parents, and gave themselves tax brakes if they send them to private
schools! Children in those schools start out believing they have a future. I would
suggest that far more students in the Saint Paul system have a belief that school is
pointless. Because, having not been able to fend of the evils of "affirmative action"
these crusaders of the right have allowed tuition costs to go so high that virtually
no inner city kid could hope to work his/her way through school. Another, victory for
the pious faithful followers of the all mighty dollar. Their sons and daughters are
assured in preschool that mommy and daddy have a college fund growing for them. High
tuition keeps the rift-raft out.
I could go on, but you either get the point or you don't. One last thought is
remember the most "liberal" president in the last 36 years campaigned on "its the
economy stupid" and welfare reform.
J.M.O.N.T.O.M.E.P.P.O.F
Chuck Repke
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