'Fix the Schools' @ Reason.tv

Nick Gillespie and Co. are putting on some really good programs. Note the comments of Lyman Millard of the Citizens' Academy, at about 7:05 minutes: "We're trying to save children's lives here."

I've been thinking so much about this, as I see more and more kids with deep, even crushing, educational needs at my college. Things have not been getting better, and I've been teaching at LBCC for ten years. Robert Stacy McCain, in response to my recent piece on school reform, wrote an essay at Hot Air: "The Failure of School Reform." It's powerful. The happy medium for me is somewhere (somehow) between the kind of caring and autonomy at the charter schools and the fundamental attention to students (that only parents can give) discussed at Stacy's essay. Not all families can homeschool their kids. But we as a society have to find a way to break the organized labor/ big union indifference to the needs of today's youth. Remember my entry on Providence St. Mel as well, "'The Providence Effect': Astonishing Educational Achievement, 'The Way It Should Be Done'.'

Seeing. Feeling. 'Precious'

I saw 'Precious' today. I don't want to give the story away, because I hope all of my readers take time to see this film. This is the kind of social commentary that's needed, even though the movie's set in 1987. Here's a portion from the Los Angeles Times' review, from Betsy Sharkey:

In a no-child-left-behind world, Precious was lost long before she could be left. No self-esteem to speak of, she tries for invisibility. At school it's easier, no one is really interested. At home, she's got a soul-destroying nightmare of a mother who has made Precious her project. Played to fearless and godless perfection by Mo'Nique, Mary spends her days in front of the TV while hurling a steady stream of invective -- along with the occasional frying pan -- in her daughter's direction.

Hope should not exist in all that despair, but Precious turns out to be an odds-defying storm that batters the emotions, shakes the soul and still manages to put a silver lining on the blackest of clouds in ways you might not have thought possible.

When the school counselor discovers Precious is pregnant, the story begins its painful descent into the world of America's underclass. There is no safety net for Precious -- her family, social services and the educational system have all failed her.

You better RTWT to get the full details, but I can say this movie tugged at me personally. (I can say ...) Precious is raped and it's graphic at the film. But it's the film's pain that comes closest to where I'm coming from. My father was abusive in the way Precious' mom is abusive. It's an inexplicable soul-grind of a life, and if you feel trapped, it's either those flights of fantasy that save you (Precious daydreams to take her away) or it's thoughts of an early demise by one's own hand. My dad beat me with a belt when I was a small child (for small things, like not finishing my chores). But it was when I was grown that he nearly beat me down, berating me for my inadequacies, for not being the "man" he was, and for being my mother's favorite (and hence the cause of my parents' divorce). But what really tugged at me was the pigs feet. Yep, Precious cooks. In fact, when she starts at the alternative school her teacher goes around the room asking for introductions, and each girl is asked to say something positive about themselves. "What do you do well?", the teacher asks Precious. She shakes her head, nothing. Then pressed, she says, "I can cook." And boy can she. And that's the thing. Boy could my dad cook. Dinner time was like heaven around that house (my dad's), and when I see Precious cooking up that soul food it takes me back to family's heritage. That's a black thing that I no longer have. I never could cook that well (and I prefer hamhocks to pig's feet anyway). But I suspect there's something special about abuse in the black family. (There's always abuse, but culture matters, and I think inner-city black poverty is distinctive.) We weren't poor growing up in my house, but my dad was basically orphaned at 12 years-old. He bore that pain his entire life, ultimately taking it out on me - the only male child - and driving my mother away in divorce after about 20 years of marriage.

But there's something else. It's the poverty, which I've never experienced. Precious' mom is a welfare queen. She's dishonest and milking the system. And when you watch the film's conclusion you'll be devastated, practically assaulted by the fact that such truly demonic indifference to the welfare of a child is possible.

If folks have thought about my writing, and my interests, a lot of the things I write about and rehash are things that have intrigued me all my life, things that I've needed to explain. Never growing up in the inner city itself, but being raised with cultural blackness, is something that's forever a shaper of identity. But I suppose my dad had assets the truly poor and disadvantaged have never had (he was educated at NYU), and so I've had benefits that don't often end up making it downtown. If more Americans really understood what was happening, if they had a clue to these pathologies, then perhaps we'd spend more time focusing on what works (education and networks of private support, not welfare). If folks remember my report on 'The Providence Effect,' you'll know what I'm saying. We've got to do something in this country. As bad as Precious had it, she's gonna make it out. But see the film to know exactly what I'm saying.

*******

ADDENDUM: Since I noted my abusive dad, I should probably indicate that if you've seen 'Affliction', well, that's my story without the poverty and pig's feet. I'm lucky I didn't kill my old man.

'The Providence Effect': Astonishing Educational Achievement, 'The Way It Should Be Done'

I took my oldest son to Santa Monica last night to see The Providence Effect. The movie is playing this week at Laemmle's Monica 4-Plex (the next block down from the 3rd Street Promenade). Kenneth Turan's review is here. And note this:

The person behind this heartening achievement is the school's president, Paul Adams III, a formidably charismatic individual who is determined to change the culture of American education, to break the cycle of poverty and give poor children the same opportunities as wealthy ones.

A veteran of the civil rights movement, Adams started at Providence St. Mel as a guidance counselor.

When the Chicago Archdiocese threatened to close the institution, he began a fundraising movement that enabled him to buy the building, take the school private, and run it so successfully that President Reagan came to visit. Twice.

Adams says he runs the school the old-fashioned way. Discipline is key for him; he and his staff enforce zero tolerance for drugs. Without discipline, he says, you can't get a student's attention.

Once that attention is assured, Adams counts on his inspired faculty to excite the kids about learning, and judging by the interviews with current and former students and glimpses inside selected classrooms, the method seems to work.

President Reagan's at 1:45 at the trailer above. He praises the students with open arms, exhorting them in triumph, "This is the way it should be done." To see him there, speaking to that school -- an all black school during the 1980s when the social welfare state had reached epic proportion, and when poverty and crime had destroyed the inner-cities -- is incredibly uplifting.

And what struck me, from the perspective of a teacher, was the no BS approach to instruction. There's no sign of progressive education throughout the entire film (and thus no mind-crushing leftist indocrtination). It's straight learning, with in-your-face instructors and administrators who spend time with the kids and in the classroom. Things go so well it seemed almost antiseptic. But as the early minutes of the film show, Chicago had been overrun by gang violence and much of the Westside had been razed in a far-from-finished scheme of urban redevelopment. Interviews with graduates -- kids who grew up to be doctors and bankers, etc. -- illustrated that the school was truly a life-saving institution, and education became the central focus of the child and the child's family.

The Providence Effect website is here. The Providence St. Mel school website is here. The school boasts a 100 percent college entrance acceptance rate, and the homepage states that "The School That Refused to Die -- Now a Model for Urban Education."

And I was thinking exactly that after learning of the death of Derrion Albert in Chicago this week. The Los Angeles Times has a report, "Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan Attend Chicago Teen's Funeral." And from the Chicago Tribune, "Derrion Albert Funeral: There Is No Simple Fix For Problems, Pastor Says; Parents Urged to Reclaim Their Children, City Urged to Educate Kids Closer to Home":

In death, the 16-year-old became the latest high-profile name on the long list of young Chicagoans who have died violently. The teen's brutal beating with two-by-fours was recorded Sept. 24. The attack captured the nation's attention and elicited a response from the White House.

President Barack Obama is sending Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan to Chicago this week in the wake of the fatal beating. Obama's spokesman has indicated the administration is preparing an initiative to address the national issues of youth crime and violence.

It's almost tragic that the president's not spending time on these issues -- the crisis in American education -- rather than the year-long ObamaCare fiasco. This is the modern equivalent of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. And while I'm tempted to say something like "I can't see how the president has ignored these issues," that's not true. I know exactly how. The corrupt Cook County Democratic Party machine, thoroughly infiltrated with crooked cronies, all the way down to union hacks, progressive education activists, and community organizing thugs, has consigned to city's poor to perpetual poverty. Michelle Malkin's book, Culture of Corruption, discusses how Michelle Obama milked her connections to lucrative jobs while crying racism all the way to the top. These people are a joke, and the Democratic political establishment is the last entity that's going to solve the crisis of the city's -- and America's -- urban poor.

That's why seeing Reagan in the film was so riveting for me last night. President Reagan was excoriated by the black community in the 1980s for cutting welfare programs, but it's going to be conservatives with the vision to match Reagan's who will lift the hope for America's youth again. And it's going to be the traditional educational methods found at Providence St. Mel that will be the vehicle for greater advancement for those now held back by institutional malfeasance and progressive political corruption.

See also, WitnessLA "The Providence Effect: A Murder & An Answer." There's an interview there with Paul Allen, and this part illustrates my point:

WLA: With all your success, you must have a lot of people coming to you from the Chicago Public School system wanting advice as to how what you’ve done can be replicated in a public school setting.

PA: Actually no one has come

WLA: What do you mean no one? Like not one person from the Chicago School District has come to visit St. Mel’s?

PA: Never. Not one.

WLA: You’re kidding. I’m sorry to press this, but not one as in zero people?

PA: Zero.

WLA: Wow. That is completely nuts.

PA: I think so.

See what I mean?