Tag Archive for education

George "Loki" Williams | April 9, 2012
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Join the Discussion

One of the main reasons that we create and publish our books is to incite dialogue and hopefully action.

The topics we have covered in our trilogy – homelessness, women in prison, and juvenile justice – are some of the great challenges that face our communities. By shining a spotlight on the destructive cycles that contribute to these issues we hope to not only educate, but to also motivate people into making a difference.

When these issues are addressed two key things happen:

  • The economic burden on society is lightened.
  • The social burden on society is lightened.

It is that rare animal in the political arena: a truly bipartisan “win-win” scenario.

A focus on rehabilitation and reintegration into society has been proven fiscally conservative; the savings over the long term are incontrovertible. At the same time the focus on social factors such as generational cycles of neglect or abuse appeals to the classic liberal stance. This is one area where, no matter how toxic our politics may become, both sides of the aisle have reason to get on board.

How can you help? For one thing you can join the discussion. In the interest of reaching as many people as possible we have been branching out into the world of social media. Join us on our Facebook Page, Google+ Page, or Twitter. Ask us questions, share your stories, or just follow along as we keep you abreast of the latest news on these topics.

Of course we would love it if you would buy our books and share them with friends as well. I highly advise our most recent effort – Born, Not Raised: Voces  from Juvenile Hall – because there is a lot of legislation going on right now across the U.S. that concerns our juvenile justice system. As state budgets get tighter, some are embracing the financial logic in our proposals, while others are backsliding to older, less effective strategies.

It is important to get informed on these issues, as in one way or another they impact all of us in the end.

We look forward to hearing from you!

 

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Category: Born Not Raised, downTown U.S.A., Education, Facebook, Homelessness, Humane Exposures, It's More Expensive to Do Nothing, Maggots in My Sweet Potatoes | Tags: , , , , ,
George "Loki" Williams | January 23, 2012
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The Lottery: Madeleine Sackler’s documentary on charter schools

Charter schools are a different breed. Unlike other schools they operate according to a charter with the city or state, usually for a period of five years, and if they are not producing results at the end they are closed.

While the funding comes from the government, charter schools are independent of the teacher’s unions.  They also boast other qualities that education proponents generally seek – a longer school year,  longer class days, and the ability to fire teachers whose performance is not deemed up to par.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Unfortunately there are not enough charter schools to go around, particularly in areas that need them most. Harlem is one of those areas. In Harlem there are 23 non-charter schools. Of those 19 have less than half of their students reading at the proper grade level, and the only means of escape into the charter system is completely random – a lottery. A lottery in which 3,000 children compete for less than 500 seats.

This one in six chance of getting a decent education inspired Madeleine Sackler to show the world what was happening. Take a look at the trailer for her recent documentary, The Lottery:

Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle sums it up well:

By the time the lottery takes place, viewers understand all that’s riding on it. You look at all these beautiful kids, with all the potential in the world, and every expectation for a great life, and you know that at most one-sixth of them will come out of the room with a fighting chance. That shouldn’t be.

Let’s follow up with some of the media coverage, including this interview with the director on NBC New York:

View more videos at: http://nbcnewyork.com.

While the situation re: charter vs. public schools will vary from one community to another, the results and findings Sackler presents does make a strong argument for exploring them in other areas.

Education is one of the most fundamental assets a child can have, and it’s lack is a liability of tragic proportions.

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Category: Education, New York City | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
George "Loki" Williams | December 30, 2011
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Crime In New Orleans: Reaping the Whirlwind

National Guard and NOPDOne reason I am as dedicated to this blog as I am is that I am from New Orleans. Since last Thursday we have had 197 murders here so far this year alone — last year’s tally was 175 or 51 murders per 100,000 residents. That’s 10 times the national average. Most of them committed by our inner city youth.

Crime here has always been extreme, but since Hurricane Katrina and the levee failures that followed it things have gotten so much worse. The real tragedy is that often both the victims and the perpetrators of these killings are the city’s youth. Poverty, low quality education, and many other factors have been entrenched here for close to 300 years, but there has been an added array of issues added to the mix in the post storm era.

USA Today‘s Rick Jervis takes a look:

Why has it been so difficult to staunch the killings, even with new leadership at the police department and the conviction of several officers involved in post-Katrina shootings of civilians? Katrina and the ensuing collapse of schools, home life and other support structures likely played a role, says Lance Hill, executive director of the New Orleans-based Southern Institute for Education and Research, who has tracked crime trends.

Children displaced by the floods returned with their families to a wrecked city, bounced from school to school and lacked mental health professionals to help them through the trauma, he says.

Six years later, many of those kids are under-educated, unemployed and seeping into trouble, Hill says. School expulsion rates also soared after Katrina, putting more kids on the street, he says.

‘The spike in violence we’re seeing …was in fact predicted by experts,’ Hill says. ‘Their warnings went unheeded.’

It is because of the Humane Exposures approach of rehabilitation and addressing the root causes of crime that I consider this blog important. All I have to do is look at the current local debate about whether to call in the National Guard because of the shootings to see the the results of neglecting these sources of anomie.

Over our first year back in New Orleans in the wake of the disaster my wife often commented on the fact that we had become a city without elders. Since grandparents are a culturally vital part of ours of any other community you can see the problem. Additionally, once  tightly knit family groups were scattered to the four winds, with many financially unable to effect a return even unto this day. While poor parenting skills are certainly a factor here, in many cases the parents have not returned to the city, but the kids have. In the meantime mental health resources have progressed from nonexistent to marginal over the years, and are not easily accessible for adults or children.

Education, mental health care, and substance abuse programs are all vital and effective alternatives to incarceration. They are also a good vaccination against the behaviors that lead to it. Right now New Orleans is buried in a crime wave spawned by a lack of all of these factors.

If you need a good argument a to why these tactics should be embraced just take a look at our murder rate here in the Crescent City. By the time you read this it may have passed the 200 mark.

Image Source: Loki, used by permission

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Category: Criminal Justice, Juvenile Justice, New Orleans | Tags: , , , , ,
SusieL | November 7, 2010
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Inappropriate talk on daytime TV for teens, children and young adults.

HUMANE EXPOSURES explores the quality of daytime TV for young mothers with children at home, or for children and teens coming home from school and turning on TV as they have a break between school and homework. Or are all kids in afternoon sports?

The Doctors, CBS daytime one-hour show, had topics about “mental orgasm,” “vaginal discharge,” “swamp butt,” “anal sex,” “going gray down there,” and other embarrassing, personal, female issues that children and teenagers coming home from school, grabbing a snack and turning on the tube, do not need to see, hear about, become aware of, or add to other inappropriate viewing on daytime TV.  Is this valued information for young mothers to view? Is this what we want young mothers and their mothers to talk about as critical issues of today? This show airs in San Diego from 4:00-5:00 p.m. opposite Oprah.

HUMANE EXPOSURES is interested in your thoughts.

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Category: Born, Education, Health, Humane Exposures, Juvenile Justice, Parenting, Public School, Women's Issues | Tags: , , , , , , ,
George "Loki" Williams | October 26, 2010
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Alabama Inmates Tell Kids to Stay in School in a Documentary

SchoolIt is no secret that there is a link between education and one’s eventual path in life. Nowhere is this more painfully asserted than by the number of dropouts that end up in jail or prison. In Alabama, the officials have taken notice, and are using a short documentary film to communicate the “stay in school and out of prison” message to the students. Rick Harmon, a reporter for The Montgomery Advertiser, fills us in:

You wouldn’t expect drug dealers and killers to be in­vited into Alabama classrooms — especially not to teach. But they had a message that everyone from Gov. Bob Riley and Alabama Superintendent of Education Joe Morton to the inmates themselves believed Alabama students needed to hear.

The message was stay in school and out of prison. It was delivered by ‘lifers’ at Wetumpka’s Tutwiler Prison for Women and Atmore’s Holman Prison during a 52-minute video called ‘Inside Out.’ The video, created by the nonprof­it Mattie C. Stewart Foundation, was shown at tri-county area high schools last year.

We have the highest percentage of the population behind bars in the U.S. than any other nation on the planet. A Northeastern University study had reported in 2009 that, on an average day, roughly one in 10 male high school drop­outs between the ages of 16 and 24 was incarcerated. With high school grads, that number is down to one out of 35, and it’s only one out of 500 among the college graduates. In 2002, the Harvard Civil Rights Project study found that 68 percent of prison inmates are high school dropouts.

These are disturbing numbers. Numbers that the documentary hopes to put a dent in. When delivering messages to kids, there is often a credibility gap that the people behind the film hope to overcome by having the actual inmates be the ones delivering it. Harmon writes,

‘I couldn’t get a good job with no education,’ one of the female inmates at Tutwiler says in the documentary. ‘That’s why I kept selling drugs. That’s why I ended up here.’

‘I wonder where I would be now if I had stayed in school and gotten the kind of education my parents had been en­couraging me to get?’ says a male inmate at Holman serving life without parole.

Obviously, we believe in the power of personal narrative, especially in situations like this one. It is easy for a child to view the possibility of future incarceration as an abstract. When it transmutes into a real person, the impact is magnified many times. As always, putting a human face on these issues is vital. These raw, basic stories of humanity have a better chance of striking home than sanctimonious pronouncements or dry factoids. Especially when we’re talking to children.

We will be returning to this topic with our next book, Born Not Raised: Kids at Risk, which explores the troubled psyches of youngsters serving time in juvenile hall. The book showcases a variety of creative tasks taken on by the young detainees — writing projects, artwork, elicited responses to photographs. The revealing results underscore the Humane Exposures’ conviction that early education and youth development are the most effective strategies for breaking the cycle of at-risk behavior and helping our youth thrive. Look for the announcements about the publication date soon!

Source: “THE DROPOUT PROBLEM: Many leave schools for life in lockup,” The Montgomery Advertiser, 10/24/10
Image by dave_mcmt, used under its Creative Commons license.
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Category: Criminal Justice, Education, Humane Exposures, Juvenile Justice, Prison, Prison Reform | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
George "Loki" Williams | October 12, 2010
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Guggenheim’s Superman: Education Is Everybody’s Problem

SupermanHUMANE EXPOSURES would like to salute Davis Guggenheim. The director on An Inconvenient Truth has a new film out, and he is hoping that it will spark a dialogue about education in the same way his prior film has generated debate about climate change. Waiting For Superman is nothing less than an S.O.S. on behalf of our school systems nationwide. A call for awareness and action on this subject which affects us all.

It all started earlier in the year when Guggenheim and his wife decide to visit an obviously ailing school that they passed every morning while taking their child to her school. Why did he do it? Alison Gang, San Diego native and movie critic for Sign On San Diego, reports:

So why visit a school that his kids don’t even attend? ‘Superman’ makes the point that failing schools are everyone’s problem, even if your family has options or you don’t have children at all. But, Guggenheim argues, the system can’t be changed unless the public demands reform, which is exactly what he aims to inspire with his film.

‘I think there’s a series of often unspoken reasons that we give ourselves not to care, not to open our hearts to this,’ he said. ‘I want to puncture this kind of disconnect. That’s what a movie should do, connect all the dots and get people to go, ‘Oh, it’s real. This affects me.’’

This s exactly what we hope to do with our own documentary, It’s More Expensive To Do Nothing. Public awareness and dialogue are essential to effecting any substantive change no matter whether you are addressing education as Guggenheim is, or homelessness and the penal system as we have. Without that essential engagement — there is no pressure to produce change. Fortunately, it would seem that Guggenheim’s effort is getting some legs under it:

Whether ‘Superman’ will start the wave of massive reforms necessary to turn a notoriously intractable system on its head remains to be seen, but it has already earned a nod from Oprah Winfrey, who dedicated an entire show to the film, and it won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival.

With Oprah’s powerful reach behind it, this film will get a lot more attention. Step one is always getting people to see it so that it can motivate them to explore the topic further and hopefully take action.

Of course, anything that digs deeply into the long-established policy is bound to get a backlash. In this instance, the film’s stressing of educational accountability is, shall we say, less than popular with the teacher’s unions. Gang writes:

Less than pleased with the film are the teachers unions, which take issue with the film’s stance against automatic tenure and lack of teacher accountability. Taking on the normally taboo topic was a difficult decision for Guggenheim, a lifelong Democrat whose father brought him up to believe strongly in unions. ‘But that’s why you make documentaries. To say things that no one wants to say and to make people face uncomfortable truths.’ He smiles, ‘Not inconvenient truths, but uncomfortable ones.’

Uncomfortable truths are important. It is when we face these and deal with them that we mature, both as individuals and as a society.

Documentary film fans should visit the homes of both films on Facebook: Waiting For Superman and It’s More Expensive to Do Nothing. Each covers a different aspect of the overall problem our society faces — providing proper support for children as they grow up in order to help them be productive members of society. Our film looks at the prison system and makes a great followup to Superman as it explores the frequency with which the issues Guggenheim examines impact those children in later life.

Source: “Guggenheim knows he isn’t ‘Superman’,” Sign On San Diego, 10/08/10
Image by emilydickensonrisdesabmx, used under its Creative Commons license.
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Category: Education, Humane Exposures, It's More Expensive to Do Nothing, Prison, Prison Reform | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
George "Loki" Williams | October 8, 2010
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Teen Overcomes Homelessness, Excels in College

PotentialMost people just walk right by the homeless. People living on the street are often viewed as the detritus of society, failed lives with no potential for betterment. Not to say that everyone feels this way, but there is a large segment of the population that does.

Just as with any other segment of the population, this sort of generalization is incorrect. This is especially true of the children, more of whom are living on the streets every day. A child is not responsible for his or her situation, and children are the embodiment of potential.  The ability to realize that potential is harshly curtailed when one is homeless. Still, there are those who manage to triumph over the odds stacked against them.

Sarah Auffret, who writes for the Arizona State University News, brings us one such story, the story of an amazing young woman named Mona:

When she and her mother had to sleep on the street, Romonia ‘Mona’ Dixon would pull out a bag of books she brought home from elementary school and read by the street light. She’d cover up with her mother’s jacket and pretend she was one of the characters in a book, and it made her feel safe.

That was just a few years ago, on the nights when the homeless shelters in San Diego were full. When she was 10 they moved to Tempe, where they continued to live in shelters until the family got into public housing.

Now, seven years later, Mona is a freshman residing in Barrett, the Honors College. She was literally one amongst thousands in the running for the National Youth of the Year award given by the Boys & Girls Clubs last fall, and has accrued over $100,000 in scholarship funds. We’d say this indicates potential. Vast potential.

In this era of financial chaos, you never know who it is you walk past as that person settles down for the night on a street corner. Amazing talents and potential are almost certainly being squandered due to the simple lack of opportunity.

Source: “Student overcomes homelessness to achieve, inspire others,” Arizona State University News, 10/07/10
Image by M0les, used under its Creative Commons license.
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Category: Education, Homelessness, Humane Exposures | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
George "Loki" Williams | September 21, 2010
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Get My School Bucks: An Innovative Web Effort Supporting Education

Get My School Bucks

Did you know that you can help a struggling school simply by shopping? Chad and Melinda Reist of San Diego have created a way for you to do just that, on a website called GetMySchoolBucks.com.

Back in April, KFMB TV Channel 8 ran a story about their efforts, which explains how it all works:

‘We don’t want our younger ones to not have the education they should have,’ Melinda said.

Their solution: a web site that offers discounted gift certificates. Any company interested offers its services on getmyschoolbucks.com at 20 percent off, and any customer interested purchases it at five percent off. The web site takes its cut and the rest goes back to the schools.

‘Essentially it’s money you are already going to spend, so before you head out to dinner with the family, might as well save five percent and give five percent to the schools,’ Chad said.

Sounds like the Reists are on to something. Everybody likes to save money, particularly when the economy is such a mess, so offering coupons is a great way to get people to participate. Adding in the socially conscious element that so many Internet-based efforts are exhibiting these days should really give it legs.

The Reists are not the only parents concerned for their children’s educational future, especially in San Diego, where the state of the school board is continually chaotic. As we’ve stated on numerous occassions, many of the social ills we face are directly related to poor education. There is a plethora of studies linking it to both crime and homelessness, and, while not the sole cause of either, it is still cause for grave concern.

Source: “San Diego couple’s web business to help schools,” KFMD TV Channel 8, 04/01/10
Image of GetMySchoolBucks logo, used under Fair Use: Reporting.
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Category: Education, Humane Exposures, Public School, San Diego | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
George "Loki" Williams | September 15, 2010
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San Diego’s School Board: A Long and Winding Road to Change

Old schoolSo many of our societal ills can be traced back to failures in the American educational system. Thus it is vitally important that we take an interest in that system and how it’s functioning.

In San Diego, one of the obvious problems is the continuing changes in the school superintendent’s office. The electoral process for the school board in San Diego is both archaic and unusual, and, in addition, it is unlike any other electoral process in the city.

Emily Alpert, a blogger for Voices of San Diego, recently presented an in-depth analysis of that odd system as well as the critiques it has drawn from both sides of the political aisle. Here is a small sample:

Here is how the unusual system works: Candidates like Rosen and his opponents have to survive two elections. In the June primary, they battle in one of five smaller subdistricts. The top two candidates then advance to the November election, where the entire school district votes.

The system might seem strange: No other K-12 school district in San Diego County is elected this way. It is a hybrid of district elections — in which voters in a small slice of a city or school district elect their own representative — and at-large elections in which the whole area votes.

But it was actually the same way that San Diego used to elect its City Council. Even though the city has no power over the school district, schools’ election rules have been laid out in the city charter since 1939.

Voters scrapped that system for City Council 22 years ago, replacing it with district-only elections to ensure that minorities had a better shot at being heard.

But the system stayed the same for the school board — and attracts the same criticisms.

Alpert then goes into a detailed examination of views on all sides of the equation. Here are a few that  she shares in her article:

San Diegans 4 Great Schools, a group that includes philanthropists, business leaders and parents, argues that the existing school board system is outdated and blames it for the revolving door of superintendents that San Diego Unified has suffered in recent years.

Organizer Scott Himelstein says a small school board with five members can swing too easily in a single election, changing the whole direction of the school district in a snap. His group has quietly discussed the idea of adding four new, appointed members to the board.

This would bring it more in line with the rest of the state:

Most school boards in California have five members, but almost all of the large school districts elsewhere in the country have larger boards with seven or nine trustees.

Anyone interested in social issues should take a look at Alpert’s article (link below under “Sources”). Most social ills seem to be rooted in childhood, and education is a vastly important part of that. Issues at that level all too often blossom later in life into homlessness, criminal activity, and substance abuse. As a result, examination of the system and exploration of the methods that can improve it are vital.

Source: “The Unusual Road to the San Diego School Board,” Voice of San Diego, 09/06/10
Image by Adam Pieniazek, used under its Creative Commons license.
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Category: Education, Humane Exposures, Public School, San Diego | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
George "Loki" Williams | September 2, 2010
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“Race to the Top” Winners Overwhelmingly East Coast

Schoolhouse“One size fits all” is not an adage that applies to social issues. It’s especially true in the case of education. Most of the issues we at HUMANE EXPOSURES cover in our books are affected by access to quality education. From the homeless issues presented in downTownUSA: A Personal Journey with the Homeless to the inside view of female imprisonment shared in Maggots in My Sweet Potatoes: Women Doing Time, we see education as a frequent backbeat to the overall story.

Thus it is with great interest that we follow news of innovation in the realm of education. Unfortunately, the news is not always good. Last Tuesday, the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced the most recent states to win the “Race to the Top” competition. While that would seem to be good news, there do seem to be a few troubling details. There is an odd geographic footprint to the awards distributed by this Obama Administration’s signature educational initiative.

You see, with the exception of Hawaii, all of the states that were awarded major grants under the program are east of the Mississippi, and the majority of them hug the eastern seaboard. Oddly enough, my home state of Louisiana, which was considered a shoe-in for funding, has received nothing under the program.

Some good arguments are made by these states that chose not to vie for the funds, as Sam Dillon reports for The New York Times:

Educators in many of the states that did not win, or did not even participate in the competition — which includes every state from Tennessee west to the Pacific — said they were hamstrung from the outset.

They said the competition’s rules tilted in favor of densely populated Eastern states, which tend to embrace more the ideas that Washington currently considers innovative, including increasing the number of charter schools and firing principals in chronically failing schools.

But those rules have seemed a poor fit for the nation’s rural communities and sparsely populated Western regions, experts said.

In small towns, for example, there is often just one school, so setting up a parallel charter school might not be feasible. It can also be hard to attract principals to such communities. And many of rural states do not have the resources or staff to write sophisticated grant applications.

While adding funding to our strained school system is something that is obviously needed, the needs and resources of the communities in question need to be evaluated before we declare that something is “the right choice,” for everyone. One size does not fit all.

Source: “Eastern States Dominate in Winning School Grants,” The New York Times, 08/24/10
Image by Nicholas T., used under its Creative Commons license.
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Category: downTown U.S.A., Education, Humane Exposures, Maggots in My Sweet Potatoes, Public School | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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