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Adam
F L I N T O I D
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/schoolisthesurestpathtoachievingkingsdream;_ylt=AiZtK8tAhIol4rHxPe7nskgDW7oF
Two things got my attention last week. One was the 40th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King Jr. The other was evidence of the worsening condition of the dream he shared with this nation during his 1963 speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
In his "I Have a Dream" speech, King said blacks would not be content until we were granted our full citizenship rights. One of those rights he fought for was the right to go to school. Education, King understood, was a road to freedom for blacks — an escape route, a way around the debilitating effects of racial discrimination. But 40 years after his assassination, this portion of King's dream is on the verge of becoming a nightmare.
Three days before the nation observed the anniversary of his assassination on April 4, 1968, America's Promise Alliance, created by former secretary of State Colin Powell, reported that large numbers of youngsters in the 50 largest cities were failing to complete high school. The graduation rate for blacks was just 53.4% in the 2003-04 academic year. Only Native Americans have a lower graduation rate (49.3%).
Dropout-crime link
Even more alarming, there's evidence of a link between the black school dropout rate and criminal behavior. "There's a direct correlation, and we see it time and time again," says Patricia Jessamy, a state's attorney for Baltimore. In 2006, her office charged 20 juveniles, ages 14-17, with murder. Fifteen of them weren't attending school on a regular basis.
It gets worse. In Philadelphia, Zahir Boddy-Johnson, 17, who according to police is a dropout, has been charged with attempted murder. He's accused of shooting a uniformed Housing Authority police officer in February in a failed robbery attempt. Apparently, he was trying to get the restitution he had been ordered to pay for another crime.
In Chapel Hill, N.C., Laurence Lovette, 17, and Demario Atwater, 21 — both high school dropouts — have been charged with murdering University of North Carolina's student body president, Eve Carson, last month.
In Baltimore last December, Lataye King, a 17-year-old dropout, was sentenced to life in prison with all but 25 years suspended for her part in the 2006 killing of Nicole Edmonds. King killed the teenager for her cellphone and a sandwich, which she ate as she walked away from the crime scene, police said.
Preventive measures
Jessamy says that "the solution is to do more prevention and intervention programs. Kids are constantly recycled through the system, and they have no responsible adults in their lives."
She has started a reading program to help youngsters who are lagging behind catch up — and hopefully graduate.
In Georgia, Fulton County Judge Marvin Arrington is trying another approach. He made national news recently when he asked all whites to leave his courtroom so he could lecture black defendants awaiting trial about the bad choices they have made in their lives. After being criticized, he repeated that lecture last week with an interracial audience in his courtroom.
"I thought I would challenge them to do better," Arrington told me. "I told them if you're not in school, if you're not being trained for a job, you're not going to be able to compete ... and you're likely to end up in jail."
He's right. Last month, 31.3% of blacks ages 16-19 were unemployed.
"As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free," King said in 1967. "No Lincoln Emancipation Proclamation, no Johnsonian civil rights bill can totally bring this kind of freedom. The Negro will only be free when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs ... his own emancipation proclamation."
That's a message I didn't hear being delivered last week by those who celebrated King's life. But it is one that black leaders must drive home to the large number of young blacks who drop out of school — or risk standing idly by while King's dream becomes a nightmare. |
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Tue Apr 08, 2008 6:10 pm |
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squash
F L I N T O I D
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Flint Board of Education election May 6.
Restore the dream Adam. |
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Tue Apr 08, 2008 8:37 pm |
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