Just found out this morning that one of my former students was shot and killed. Drug related; they already have suspects. He was standing in an alley when it happened -- nothing too suspicious there. Twenty years old.
When I taught him, he was a big gangly kid with an unruly afro and a wide, charming smile. Fifteen years old and already in enough trouble to be locked up. Couldn't read a lick, but loved to learn and remembered everything I told him. I had to ask him not to answer *all* the questions, give the other kids a chance.
Over the past five years, I've been able to keep loose tabs on him because he's been in and out of other facilities and programs where friends and former co-workers met and grew to like this very affable kid.
When my friends, family, coworkers, and whoever else treat me like a pariah and a turncoat for not agreeing with their kneejerk liberal views on social programs and welfare, I point to this kid, lying dead in an alley in the snow. IT DOESN'T WORK. It didn't work for him, it didn't work for any of the thirty students I have now, many of whom have parents who still get checks for kids they haven't fed or clothed in years. It didn't work for the kid who broke into your car last week. WE TRIED IT AND IT FAILED. The young man in question had been in every taxpayer-funded feelgood program you could name. Residential. Aftercare. At risk. Intensive Outpatient. Education Group. Name your buzzword. The only people it helped were liberals whose guilt kept them up at night. While you were watching cable in your suburban McMansion, your 20-year-old charity project was bleeding to death in an alleyway. How do you feel now?
I used to be a liberal. I wanted to help. I cared. I hurt. I wanted to do things for the children. Now, going on twenty years of working with the children, my eyes have been opened to some hard, cold realities. I still care, and I still want to help -- but I know now that handouts only help the hander; they do nothing but cripple the handee. If my student, or his parents, or the kid who shot him, had been allowed to become self-sufficient without a lot of do-gooder liberal meddling, he might have lived to see Christmas.
In about an hour, I'm going to be serving apple cider and cookies to 30 incarcerated sex offenders and reading them "The Grinch." Okay, so I still have a little of the do-gooder in me. But I talk to my students about work, and about self-respect, and natural consequences. My students know what side of the fence I am on politically, and they respect that. The recent election allowed us a lot of good discussions about welfare and its pitfalls. I hope that I have reached some of them, and maybe as a result one kid might think twice before risking his life in an alley for some quick money that he feels is his birthright.
I know some of my coworkers today are going to be saying, and I quote, "the system failed him." I hear it every time one of our kids doesn't grow up to be a Nobel prize winner. D*mn right the system failed him. The SYSTEM FAILED. The system always fails. Their solution will be to pour more money into more programs to help "at-risk youth." Nobody is willing to admit that the emperor has no clothes.
My response will be the same as always, because this isn't the first student I've lost, nor will it be the last. I'll be a little tougher on my students, expect a little more of them, let them get away with a little less. And I will continue to do whatever I can to keep guilty liberals out of office...for the children.
When I taught him, he was a big gangly kid with an unruly afro and a wide, charming smile. Fifteen years old and already in enough trouble to be locked up. Couldn't read a lick, but loved to learn and remembered everything I told him. I had to ask him not to answer *all* the questions, give the other kids a chance.
Over the past five years, I've been able to keep loose tabs on him because he's been in and out of other facilities and programs where friends and former co-workers met and grew to like this very affable kid.
When my friends, family, coworkers, and whoever else treat me like a pariah and a turncoat for not agreeing with their kneejerk liberal views on social programs and welfare, I point to this kid, lying dead in an alley in the snow. IT DOESN'T WORK. It didn't work for him, it didn't work for any of the thirty students I have now, many of whom have parents who still get checks for kids they haven't fed or clothed in years. It didn't work for the kid who broke into your car last week. WE TRIED IT AND IT FAILED. The young man in question had been in every taxpayer-funded feelgood program you could name. Residential. Aftercare. At risk. Intensive Outpatient. Education Group. Name your buzzword. The only people it helped were liberals whose guilt kept them up at night. While you were watching cable in your suburban McMansion, your 20-year-old charity project was bleeding to death in an alleyway. How do you feel now?
I used to be a liberal. I wanted to help. I cared. I hurt. I wanted to do things for the children. Now, going on twenty years of working with the children, my eyes have been opened to some hard, cold realities. I still care, and I still want to help -- but I know now that handouts only help the hander; they do nothing but cripple the handee. If my student, or his parents, or the kid who shot him, had been allowed to become self-sufficient without a lot of do-gooder liberal meddling, he might have lived to see Christmas.
In about an hour, I'm going to be serving apple cider and cookies to 30 incarcerated sex offenders and reading them "The Grinch." Okay, so I still have a little of the do-gooder in me. But I talk to my students about work, and about self-respect, and natural consequences. My students know what side of the fence I am on politically, and they respect that. The recent election allowed us a lot of good discussions about welfare and its pitfalls. I hope that I have reached some of them, and maybe as a result one kid might think twice before risking his life in an alley for some quick money that he feels is his birthright.
I know some of my coworkers today are going to be saying, and I quote, "the system failed him." I hear it every time one of our kids doesn't grow up to be a Nobel prize winner. D*mn right the system failed him. The SYSTEM FAILED. The system always fails. Their solution will be to pour more money into more programs to help "at-risk youth." Nobody is willing to admit that the emperor has no clothes.
My response will be the same as always, because this isn't the first student I've lost, nor will it be the last. I'll be a little tougher on my students, expect a little more of them, let them get away with a little less. And I will continue to do whatever I can to keep guilty liberals out of office...for the children.