If I Grow Up

For DeShawn, joining a gang seems like a terrible decision — why would he want to work for a pittance running drugs when the inevitable consequences are jail or an early death? A bright boy, he does well in school and tries his best to obey the grandmother who has raised him since his mother’s accidental death in gang crossfire. But as DeShawn enters adolescence, the lure of the streets becomes a stronger force, pulling him away from his seemingly meaningless academics and toward the glamour of life in the Douglass Disciples, his housing project’s premier gang. He knows he’s risking his life, but DeShawn sees no other hope for supporting his pregnant girlfriend and growing family without the fast money life as a Disciple can provide.

I decided to write IF I GROW UP after I was invited to speak at some inner city schools. I waived my normal fee because the schools couldn’t afford to pay what suburban and private schools could pay (Question: Why, in a alleged democracy like America, should who one becomes depend so much on where one is born and what schools one attends?
I was shocked by the conditions in these schools. These were institutions of learning that could not afford full-time, and in some cases, even part-time librarians, music teachers, and art teachers. These were schools that could not afford the most rudimentary equipment and technology for teaching, or musical instruments, or adequate supplies for art classes.
Just as dismaying were the attitudes of the students. Many didn’t seem to care about my presentation. Some were absolutely determined to undermine my attempts to encourage and inspire them.* Were they testing me? Was this because I was white? Or a stranger? Or in some perceived position of authority? Some teachers helped to keep the students orderly, but other teachers stood by were no help at all. I wondered if they were thinking, “See? This is what I have to deal with every day. How do you like it?” Or perhaps even, “No one helps me. Why should I help you?”
I’ve been speaking before large audiences of students for more than 25 years, and have become reasonably adept at the tricks to keep students’ interest and attention, but these were some of the most challenging. I managed to complete the presentation, but it was painfully obvious that many in the audience had no interest in what I was saying.
And, perhaps they had a point. How much relevance do the messages “Keep trying and never give up,” and “be the best reader and writer you can be,” have in a world where more than half their classmates won’t even finish high school? Where a quarter of their friends will be dead by the age of 30, and another quarter will be in prison? Were the majority of kids not interested because they already knew that what I was saying would be utterly and completely irrelevant to their lives?
Right now, it seems, the answer is, tragically, yes. Ideally, the day will come when students everywhere will want to embrace the message that the better he/she can read and write, the more successful their life will be. But, as anyone who reads the newspapers knows, enormous changes must take place first. According to recent statistics, the only difference between 2001, when the No Child Left Behind Act was instituted, and now, is that now even more children are being left behind.

* One of the most troubling, and poignantly sad, parts of the experience could be seen on the faces of those students sitting near the front, and scattered here and there in the crowd.