False Promise Revisited

My column last week, wherein I challenged the efficacy of America's Promise Alliance (a program run by Colin and Alma Powell, and touted by Bill Cosby) certainly caused a firestorm of controversy. There’s nothing like challenging the logic of two of America's most beloved and venerated father figures to stir things up a bit; but despite the criticism I received, I'm sticking to my position. This issue is just too important to gloss over.

Powell and Cosby want to increase the graduation rate of America's inner-city schools and you’ve got to admire them for that. They are lobbying for better schools and teachers, and you've got to admire them for that, too. But a large part of their argument is that underclass parents in disadvantaged neighborhoods are not doing their jobs in terms of getting their children ready to learn. I'm totally in agreement with them on this point, and actually do admire them for saying it. Where we disagree is -- what effect will their criticism have on the situation?

They — and a lot of other folks — seem to think that if you just talk badly and loudly enough about these non-functioning parents, publicly upbraid them for their failures, and DEMAND that they do better, we’ll get the response we want — they will somehow turn into good parents … all it takes is for them to try harder. After all, these failing children are their responsibility … they are the ones that gave birth to them (sometimes at age 13).

If there were some magical way of turning functionally illiterate, irresponsible, oftentimes substance-abusing parents into positive, successful role models for their kids I’m all for it … even if it meant that we have to beat them across the head with a two-by-four with a nail in it until they get the message. Let’s line them up and get busy, and I’m willing take the first whack … as long as someone can assure me that it will ultimately work; the problem is, it won’t. No amount of chastising, scolding, or reprimanding is going to cause enough of a change in a dysfunctional parent to make a difference — even if the message is coming from Powell and Cosby. But the fact remains I truly, sincerely wish they could be successful with their scold campaign since it would be so much easier.

I posted virtually the same article on the national website The Daily Beast, which allows readers to post comments … and I was called everything from “condescending” to a “fool” for suggesting that direct intervention is needed in many disadvantaged children’s lives — children of all races. One reader’s solution was that parents should learn to read so they can read to their children. Now, I’m all for everyone learning to read, but what is the child supposed to do while the parent is learning to read; fall further and further behind in school?

I suggested that readers go to the website of the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ) and see how successful the program spearheaded by Geoffrey Canada has been in terms of breaking the cycle of poverty; the key, however, is intervention from birth; not at age 13, or nine, or even three like some Head Start programs — but at the very beginning of life.

Some responders derided HCZ (probably without actually going to the website) as “just another government program,” (it’s not government run, by the way) and another complained about “cradle to grave” care for the underclass … which the program actually breaks the cycle of, rather than perpetuating it. The simple fact is, if we assist these children at birth, and stay in their lives, HCZ has proven they will not only graduate from high school, but go on to college and become upright, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens. HCZ’s first group of graduates are coming back to help others.

The option is to do nothing and simply say, as some readers did, that “it’s too intense, too expensive.” Well, if you think that intervening, mentoring and educating children is too expensive, just compare that to the cost of ignorance — higher crime rates, soaring prison populations, and tax-dollars being thrown down the rat hole of our failed national policies.

True, the Great Society programs of Lyndon Johnson created a permanent, dependant welfare class that has to be done away with… mistakes were made. But mistakes are often made when attempting something new. We lost astronauts in our space program but didn’t abandon it; we figured out how to make things work. Why are we so eager to abandon poor people rather than institute a program that Geoffrey Canada has proven works at the HCZ?

Could the answer be that some people really don’t want the problem solved because they would then have to reexamine their long-cherished notion that something is genetically wrong with minorities, making them incapable of learning? That’s what one reader suggested when they wrote there just might not be a solution for the underclass. But it’s already too late for that argument to fly: The success of HCZ has already shot it full of holes.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com
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