Posts tagged as:

poverty

Blog Action Day: They’re Not That Much Different

by Jose on October 14, 2008 · 10 comments

in life

Following up yesterday’s post, I pretty much sat there, knowing that I had more than my fair share to say about this topic. I can’t tell you how many times people think I exist in a world of pure hyperbole and hallucination when I tell them about the “ol’ factory”. The stories of these children’s lives only gets more insane the more I find out. Recently, I’ve read a few posts from a few bloggers who are already at a crossroads when it comes to teaching students who aren’t from their own background. Nevermind the eccentricities of national crisis, war, economic downturn, gentrification, rising unemployment, dirty politricks, and all the ills of the world for a moment, because at the root of it all is how we as citizens have a responsibility to our present and future leaders to teach them more than survival but success.

I’m not excluding myself from culpability either, but sometimes I feel like we as humans have started to rely on individualistic goals more than the collective, and that byproduct comes to my class every school day, more concerned with the ephemeral than the permanent, the cool rather than the collective, and wars rather than peace. Some of you may already be thinking: Jose, the kids you teach are just at that age. But there’s a difference. I don’t see these kids as any different from me, and even with all the problems they have at home, I don’t even give off a hint that they’re foreign, no matter how different they are from me. Yet, the frequency of students with problems at home has become a little more frequent than I’m used to.

My philosophy has always been that we need to give every child a fair shot at getting an education, even when mainstream society inherently doesn’t want them to. Do we just sit there and let the 10 – 15% who do well in our class be the “standard-bearers” for the class because we inherently favor them or do we as educators strive for more? Can we use the fact that many of our most impoverished and troubled students desperately seek a way out to inspire them and make them see in themselves something they can?

Then again, who will provide professional development on how teachers should care?

Who’ll draw up that PowerPoint? Who’ll make a bar chart / pie chart to show the percentage of teachers who care in a building versus those who don’t? Who will tell the truth? And will we give a school based on that factor as well? How can we get a professional developer to inspire teachers without sounding too Freedom Writers or Save-The-Worldish? Can we inject a little more positivity amongst the students instead of just throwing them shade all the time? And I do mean, we, because even I have to catch myself from being punitive.

How can we look at students as more than just numbers?

I just get heated when I see people who’ve never been in a classroom as grown-ups trying to explain to me how different they are compared to kids these days. Even I fell into that trap, but then I got to thinking how my elders thought so low of people like me, and that must be how some of my own students feel about the adults around them. And teaching in urban schools is certainly a different experience, but sometimes I wonder if the techniques we use to promote good classroom management keep students in a poverty mentality. I’m also slightly heated at many a teacher because, for all the accolades and praises some of them get, they still manage to treat children like the dirt beneath them.

So here’s a question for all of you:

How do we get more teachers to actually inspire in their classrooms? For non-teachers, what in our society do we need to change in order to inspire more children? As a student, who inspired you the most? Do we as a society do a good enough job of having equal treatment for all students?

jose, who really wants to know the answers to the questions, because I could be wrong …

{ 10 comments }

Without Scum, There Are Still Yuppies

by Jose on October 9, 2008 · 2 comments

in life

A short note on yuppies:

Yes we get it. Young Urban Professionals. Upward mobility for (mostly) young white people wanting the best of everything. We get it: yuppies are more Wall Street conscious while hipsters are more charity conscious. We get it: they’re often the most biggest investors in urban art forms, including rap, slam poetry, and art. We also understand that the characteristics of a yuppie are broad enough that it’s far too ambiguous but any combination of yuppie / hipster characteristics will be met with disdain and spray paint against developing edifices all across any given metropolis. We don’t want them to die (well, most of us don’t). We understand; they’re people, too.

The rest of us urbanites aren’t letting up on yuppies and hipsters, though, and here’s why:

1) Yuppie-ism often invites more police and law enforcement to certain areas. Not that we hate the police per se, but why are poor communities only allowed to have better police enforcement when yuppies come in? Did we not pay taxes before or work hard enough for us to get real protection until we let developers gentrify our neighborhoods?

2) Yuppie-ism often means that mom-and-pop shops have to compete with multi-million (and billion) dollar corporations, which usually leads to …

3) Yuppie-ism often means that the flavor and unique characteristics of different neighborhoods get extricated in exchange for the safe, the sterile, and the monotonous, even when hipsters may preach about how they love the neighborhood and its flavor.

4) Yuppie-ism often drives the natives out of the neighborhood implicitly and not-so-indirectly with rent hikes, new buildings, and higher costs for groceries.

5) Yuppie-ism spends more time on Darfur than the South Bronx. It’s easier when people only look at some country as a distant problem than a train ride away.

6) Yuppie-ism, when confronted with said issue, is about preferring the “save the world” mentality as a measure of some guilt, but sometimes exacerbating the problem.

7) Yuppie-ism is when we see people jogging right across our neighborhoods that we helped build with our culture and and watching as the metaphor for this government-aided invasion punctures holes in us, deflating any possibility that we can have a nice neighborhood without it changing too much.

So the beef isn’t with yuppies / hipsters themselves. It’s with what they bring with them. They don’t really care to look at their shadows, where some of these evils lurk.

jose, who definitely read that New York Magazine article, and wondered this aloud …

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I Walked Across an Empty Land, I Knew The Backways Like The Back Of My Hand

by Jose on August 14, 2008 · 4 comments

in life

This is one of the lost blogs I wrote while I was at Dominican Republic. It was inspired by another Clay Burell post, regarding tourism and its caricatures. Thought I’d post it up tonight in light of the recent immigration post. I also updated a few things here and there, in brackets. Enjoy.

Originally written: July 7th, 2008

Over the last week or so, I’ve stayed in a sweet 4-star resort with my family. Looking around, I couldn’t help but notice that, for a while there, I thought we drove off the island and into another dimension, where masses of Europeans and Canadians ruled the place and actual Caribbeans from the islands were in short supply. I know I’ve been using the word surreal a lot, but just to give you an indication of what I’ve been exposed to,  I’ve hung out, drank, and danced with German, Irish, Canadian, British, French, Spanish, and Scottish people all at once, something I can honestly say I’ve never done and never thought possible unless I became an international rock star. Vainglorious, yes, but now that’s off my non-existent checklist of things I never thought I could pull off. (psh) I met so many people, I had a hard time keeping my NYC accent, often incorporating whichever nation’s representatives’ accent in the process. It wore off only after a heavy dose of Jay-Z and Kanye.

Also worth noting, unfortunately, were the droves of bratty kids that showed up to these resorts. I fully expected that the children of multimillionaire business owners, diplomats, and merchants of different industries would have impertinent children, but some of them really annoyed me to no end. For example, last night, the staff at the resort, a group of 18-28-year-olds, mostly Dominican, and all very energetic, gave a great show last night, full of Caribbean dance, and even a fire show that I fully didn’t expect from a guy I just played basketball with the previous day. During most of the performance, these little brats started ripping up little pieces of paper and launching spitballs at the staff, who still kept the show going. After about 3-4 songs, I got visibly annoyed as did most of the audience, and their parents finally pulled them off-stage.

When I talked to the Fire Man (his nickname for the purposes of this blog) about the aforementioned incident, he said, ironically and in Spanish, “Man, forget about it. These people aren’t used to actual courtesy. They’re not into the things we’re into.” It’s ironic because it’s the predominantly Dominican staff, who might otherwise be called degenerates simply based on their heritage, who acted professional while the wealthy guests of the hotel seem to lack the class and etiquette necessary to enjoy the show.

[It also led me to think of the idea of going to a country without actually being in it. We had running water, drinks all day and night without fail, all types of food and an unending supply, everyone wearing the latest fashionable clothes and the women wearing next to nothing, electricity, air-conditioning in each room, and people waiting on you almost hand and foot. Yet, these very "servants" and entertainers in the place practically work there day and night, from 7am-midnight, just for their families to survive. They're rarely at home, there's a 50% chance they'll get home when the electricity's been shut off in their neighborhood, they need to make sure someone went to the well and got them some water before they get home, their roads are run down, and they keep breakfast as simple as possible so they don't spend any money as most of these foods already cost an arm and a leg ... or their lives.

There's an obvious sense that the mostly European crowd here may believe that most of Dominican Republic is like that, and that's the image they share with their superwealthy friends and family when they go back to their mansions. Yes, there are definitely palm trees, Bacardi rum, and brown people in this country, but everything else around them was a complete abstraction, but I guess that's what vacations are for. There's no room for harsh reality.]

It wasn’t all bad though. Actually, it was a very good stay. Good shows, lots of swimming, great food, and very cordial people all around. Many of the people we hung out with on this trip were so nice and inviting for everything, especially after we proved ourselves on the dance floor and at the bar. Most of the conversations ended with, “You should definitely visit Glasgow/Dublin/London/Belfast/etc. and we’ll show you around.” Most of the conversations my brother and I had after speaking to them were, “What accent are we using right now?”

jose, [who definitely just used Keane's "Somewhere Only We Know" in his title ...]

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Ojala Que Llueva Cafe En El Campo (Hope That It Rains Coffee In The Field)

by Jose on July 22, 2008 · 16 comments

in life

Kids In Front of School In Rain

Juan Luis Guerra’s quintessential song is “Ojala Que Llueva Cafe En El Campo,” a song that comes across more as a incantation that the poor and hopefully at the least have coffee somehow fall from the sky to bless them, as if to say that G_d might bless them with their basic necessities to relieve them from their hunger, strife, and sorrow. Riddled with metaphors and as passionate as any song you’ll hear, it’s a reminder of how simple his people’s needs really are. In our own little way, we can be that “cafe” for someone else, not necessarily saving the children, but giving them what they need as well as we can.

On the first night that I landed in Dominican Republic, in the village my mother comes from, I almost immediately found myself teaching math, in a town in need of someone who understands how to turn “improper” fractions into mixed numbers, and how to divide. It’s scary that, even on my vacation, I’m put in the precarious position of trying to tutor a student on 2 years of math in 2 hours. The 16-year-old had a test the next day, and she didn’t really understand anything her teacher was talking about. Of course, that’s where I get to show off and make students wish they got excited about math the way I do. (ed note: Please don’t get it twisted. For goodness sakes, this is strictly PG if not G.)

Granted, a couple of things are at work here. First off, the environment she’s been raised in isn’t the best. The emphasis on education in the neighborhood is, to put it politely, disparate, seldom, and limited. There are a few residents of the hood who’ve done great things like try out for the Olympics and gone to Argentina and Spain (I’m proud to call them family), but most of the people in my neighborhood beyond that. There’s also the utter destruction of their streets, the filth that emanates from the lack of sewage and garbage transport, the violence and rape that’s occured and increased over the last 6-7 years, and what seems like an unresponsive government only concerned with getting their faces painted all over buildings and not reaching back to their supporters.

There was also her attitude. Her voice went from sweet to rancid in seconds, calling out her friends and passersby all types of names that I wasn’t too fond of. When I’m in an educational mind frame, I can’t help but roll my eyes when I’m cursing. Her friend, whose 2 years younger but who looks 10 years older, quit school (or was asked to leave) because of a prank she pulled on a teacher. Her own voice seemed to echo a naiveté about the consequences of her actions, and what most of my friends here deem as unacceptable (having a family really early) seems to be her destiny from the hints she dropped about herself.

Yet, the one slice of hope, and that’s when the next day, the girl I taught told me she definitely passed her math exam, and that excited me a bit. I also knew I couldn’t be there for the rest of her educational career to see her through “la universidad.” However, I did find something out about my little cousin Wanda that I would have never known.

She likes math.

A lot.

And she’s proficient.

Once I found out, my brother and I decided we’d sponsor her to come to the States, that is, if her grades remained at the excellent level they’re at. I put down a nice down payment, and all they needed to do was make sure she’d do what she needed. Not to say that the conditions here are the greatest, but I also find that the most successful people out of Dominican Republic have traveled to other places besides the other side of their country. They can follow the examples of Juan Luis Guerra, Aventura, Julia Alvarez, Junot Diaz, Amelia Vega, Felix Sanchez, and the myriad of underrated athletes, politicians, historians, writers, beauty pageant contestants, and television personalities that may come from their neighborhoods.

But more than anything, they can come back to their neighborhoods and be the coffee that awakens the people in their neighborhoods.

Ojala que llueva cafe …

jose, who’s taken some of the lessons from over there and applied them to his mindset here …

{ 16 comments }

The Politics of Access

by Jose on February 11, 2008 · 12 comments

in life

So High Only Dogs Can Hear Me

All the popular blogs are doing it.From: What Privileges Do You Have? - based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. (If you participate in this blog game, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.)

1. Father went to college.
2. Father finished college.
3. Mother went to college. (for 1 class)
4. Mother finished college.
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.
9. Were read children’s books by a parent.
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18 assuming that sport counts.
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18 assuming that sport counts.
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively.
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs.
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
16. Went to a private high school
17. Went to summer camp (requirement for the middle school I went to)
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18
9. Family vacations involved staying at hotels. Much less than 50% of the time.
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18.
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child.
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house.
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home.
25. You had your own room as a child. I got the guest room in my teens when we didn’t have guests.
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18.
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course. (all free)
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16. (Dominican Republic, Miami)
31. Went on a cruise with your family.
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up.
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.

I actually did a Google search to get the original exercise, and I laughed really hard, because post after post had most of these lines emboldened or underlined, and I’m here with about 6 lines in bold. And as I graduated junior high school, a predominantly Latino school, I never knew I’d be inundated with products of such privilege. Maybe it’s the idealist in me, but I thought that having this kind of privilege would make it easier for some of my classmates to become more benevolent, especially since they had less worries economically and got a head start on much of the material we studied in our four years.

Unfortunately, that not only proved false, but it’s one of the many factors that played into my antagonism towards some of my classmates. They were so comfortable with their privileges, they more readily demeaned others who couldn’t / wouldn’t get certain items. And naturally, it only got worse in Syracuse, where stories about massive car wrecks only made me and my friends roll our eyes after the person who caused the accident would say “I’ll just get a new one from my Daddy in a couple of weeks. No big deal.” And when you have “Juicy” sprawled across your ass, it’s a really easy life … really.

This isn’t to say that I haven’t had a lot of luck in my own right. I went to a poor but well-managed public school, a good middle school with small class sizes, and a private high school with its share of good resources. I had a lot of opportunities that most people in my demographic didn’t get, nor even realized they could. I’m a product of these fortunate events, and I’m happy I got what I got.

In this country, there’s this politics of access. Those to the right of the issue say that everyone has access so long as they try their hardest. They’re the ones that usually ask “Why don’t these people work hard to attain what the rest of us have?” Those to the left of the issue are the ones usually asking “Why doesn’t everyone have the same access to these privileges?” I find myself to the left, since the politics of the left demands a lot of deep digging, and deflecting the images posted in front of us about the grandness of this empire. Underneath it all, there’s no equity, and underneath it all, we don’t do enough to reinterpret successful tips for the underprivileged in this country (and in dirty not-so-secret secret news: in order to have rich people, there must be poor, and thus with all the very rich people there are many destitute areas all over this country.)

You can give people access to museums for free (NYC does it), but will they have the proper education or historical background to understand what they’re observing at the museum, even with the little notes telling them what the artifacts and painting represent?

You can have free opera showings and Caucasian-centric musicals for the masses, but do you risk telling other cultures theirs is not good enough to be considered “cultured”?

You can give as much financial aid to some of your less privileged but promising students so they can attend your institution, but are we preparing the population who got in through a trust fund or as a legacy for the culture shock as well?

Because if not, access is simply a way of telling people “See, we did something” knowing that it would do nothing to ameliorate the problem, quasi-placating the critics and thrusting the responsibility on the victim.

I’m even aiming this at well-to-do Blacks and Latinos, many of whom forget from whence they came, but that’s another post altogether. The politics of access demands that some people have it and some many don’t, because if it’s something everyone has, it’s not that special and hence not a privilege. Yet, those who already get the privilege consider it a right of birth, and don’t know what to do with themselves when they lose those “rights.”

I suppose that’s the irony of not having anything; having something above anything is considered a privilege, and when you have nothing to lose, there’s nowhere else to go but up.  Right?

jose, who wants to know how to get  1/2 a million without the FBI catching feelings …

{ 12 comments }

Short Notes: Somewhere In The Middle

by Jose on January 20, 2008 · 11 comments

in Uncategorized

The Fresh Prince of Bel Air family

A few notes of interest:

1. Yes, I cleaned up around here. Click refresh, and tell me what happens to that header. Do it a good 7 more and you’ll get your wishes granted ;-).

2. The oddest thing happened on Friday. One minute, my Feedburner says I have 83-93 readers, and the next, I have 299! Sick. What’s more, it goes back down the next day. Weird.

3. Yes, it’s my birthday on Thursday. Fun.

4. Memes that highlight the differences between men and women / Blacks, Whites, Asians, Latinos, etc. / rich and poor in a defensive and divisive way bore me to tears these days. I used to be enthralled by them when I was younger because I was able to contrast my unsophisticated observations about those differences and the ill-conceived notions of roles different people take in those stereotypes. While I agree that some stereotypes come from real research, I’m more ready to believe that those lists along with hack comedians and delusional, angry people make these lists up to reinforce divisions amongst the sexes, races, and classes when we’re really all people.

5. Cloverfield had an awesome preview, but it was an awesomely bad movie. Great effects, and snide social commentary that in some ways, I found interesting, but that ending was abrupt as all hell. Rather than make us think for a second, it made us think to leave. People in the audience laughed about as much as they were scared and grossed out. I wouldn’t watch it again, and I want some of my money back, but if you do watch, prepare for the worst.

6. Yesterday was my boy Omar’s birthday, and whenever we all get together, it’s just a mess of historic proportions. We went to Carmine’s, a popular Italian restaurant on the Upper West Side with family-style dining. Anyways, Kenny, one of the realest dudes and resident ALM (Angry Latino Man), Mike, my homegirl’s boyfriend, and Omar had a heated discussion (some in the restaurant might have called it an argument, but that’s besides the point). Every so often, I’ll interject with an off-beat joke here and there, but last night, I was more good for a hearty, body-aching laugh.

As I’m observing them, I notice that, on their side of the table, Kenny’s sitting on the left, Mike’s on the right, and Omar’s at front and center of the table, appropriate if not ironic. At first, it was pleasant enough, with each side making their points, but then it got really intense, curses being flung across the table and the rest of us caught in the crossfire. I’m all for political conversation, and all the participants brought up awesome points from their side. Yet, what struck me the most was how, after all of that, they’re still friends.

Of course, I was more on Kenny’s side of the argument, even if I was sitting on Mike and Omar’s side of the table. After all, how can anyone at the table argue against poor people when we were all the sons and daughters of immigrants or poor people? We were all the privileged offspring of people who had just enough of the essentials, and for many of our relatives and neighbors, they weren’t lucky or privileged enough to receive a college education and live on a a much better income than minimum wage. It’s easy to dismiss that when we’ve never had to experience that for ourselves.

Not to say that our fathers were anything like Phillip Banks (of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air fame), but we sometimes get the Carlton and Hillary effect, where the parents consciously protect their children from knowing about those struggles or the children live incongruously from that reality, concentrating solely on case study of self rather than percentage. Will, the hoodlum he is, often reminded them of the position they’re in and from whence they came, which is why Ashley, the most liberal of the three Banks offspring, turns out the way she does. She was still rich, but she got a better sense of what came before her, and that’s important.

But I’m a socialist by nature, so I’m inclined to this opinion, and I’ve already written my stance on all of those matters, but my opinion doesn’t dismiss their contributions to their families or their people. After all, we still shared our personal lives with each other, and ate from the same dishes. There’s still, inevitably, common threads of human decency that run through all of us at that table, and somewhere in between all of our arguments lied the solution: a huge plate of ice cream with all the fixings. We all sat there for a good 5 minutes, quietly letting the food settle. Mike ate the candle apparently, mistaking it for licorice. Omar and I laughed about stupid MySpace people. Kenny started hating on people. We left the restaurant and all went our separate ways, but we’d see each other again. As it should be.

jose, who can’t stop looking at his theme, and has Pearson and Aaron to thank for the inspiration …

{ 11 comments }

El Niagara en Bicicleta (The Niagara on Bicycle)

by Jose on January 17, 2008 · 7 comments

in Uncategorized

Gust and Charlie

2 weeks ago or so, I watched Charlie Wilson’s War, and I must say, this movie had my attention the whole movie. I was enthralled with the idea of a covert war, mainly because things of this nature happen so frequently but are kept from us by the national media. In any case, what really made me contemplate the world’s ills a little was the bit by Gust Avrakotos (wonderfully played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman) in which he says:

A boy is given a horse on his 14th birthday. Everyone in the village says, ‘Oh how wonderful.’ But a Zen master who lives in the village says, ‘We shall see.’ The boy falls off the horse and breaks his foot. Everyone in the village says, ‘Oh how awful.’ The Zen master says, ‘We shall see.’ The village is thrown into war and all the young men have to go to war. But, because of the broken foot, the boy stays behind. Everyone says, ‘Oh, how wonderful.’ The Zen master says, ‘We shall see.’

Powerful. It’s amazing how even when a few people fancy themselves as benefactors to a certain situation can they end up being their executioners. For instance, I take a glance over at Dominican Republic, a country wrought with so much promise yet so much poverty. In the song “El Niagara en Bicicleta” by Juan Luis Guerra, he discusses a trip he took to the medical office, and the trouble with just getting medicine in that country. I thought, for someone as rich and popular as he is, if he can’t get good health care in his own country, what does that mean for the other inhabitants of this country?
With so many American-titled streets and statues (there’s even a Vietnam there, fittingly enough), one would think the country was a property of the United States (kind of like putting the Monroe Doctrine on its head). Yet, this property still has problems keeping the electricity on, still can’t have fair elections, can’t get a real sewer system running, still have drastic medical needs, and have had a series of dangerous robberies even in communities that never had issues with theft on such a massive scale before.

Yet, people in these Americas get mad because so many of us whose families immigrated from other countries would rather concentrate on the countries from whence we came instead of places like Darfur, the African country du jour for anyone who considers themselves “liberal” in this country. Rather than acknowledging that it’s really easy for some of the inhabitants in this country to drop everything and go save this “Third World” country, (don’t we live on one planet?) they get mad and post secrets like this:

 

blackdarfurwhite.jpg

Please. If they really wanted to do some good, they don’t have to look any further than across the bridge, or on the other side of the highway, or a few stops on the train or bus, or on the south or east side of things. Or even better, look in the mirror and acknowledge their own roles in the continued conflicts we have amongst ourselves. Lower East Side, Harlem, South Side of Chicago, East St. Louis, South Central, and Watts all have flashes of the impoverished countries some of these “liberals” think they’re saving. And the easiest way to deal with these neighborhoods is not by ensuring that every citizen of this country has the same rights as the next, but to supplant them and gentrify the neighborhoods they live in so it fits their ideal. Similar to what’s happening to Iraq, but on a smaller scale and unfortunately much more legal.

This isn’t to say that I think anyone who lines up in support of Darfur is a faker. I think they have issues that we can help resolve. However, we’ve gone through a laundry list of countries that need America’s help; it’s like a biannual tradition of twirling the globe in our rooms and picking a country to shift the agenda to. And that’s insincere.

Which brings me back to Charlie Wilson’s War. Charlie finds himself doing the right thing for the people of Afghanistan because, honestly, he wants to. Yet, when it comes to them building their own means of survival by building a school, it’s no longer in the interest of his government. And people who want to save Afghanistan like Joanne live in these mansions as if to relieve their souls from dealing with the obvious contrast between her and the impoverished people of the country.

Thus, it’s Gust, the most dangerous, craziest, and anti-social character in the movie who observes the inevitable most eloquently. Or maybe he’d just been through so much that he’s deprogrammed from the wresting conformity that all these distractions have let us to. Because that too is like riding a bike up the Niagara …

jose, who’s been wielding Excalibur’s sword doing some serious work in class, and will report on that next week for sure …

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Everyone’s Got Their Doctorate Now

by Jose on October 28, 2007 · 10 comments

in Uncategorized

Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy”Before I continue, I’d like to thank Tia (not sure who she is, but she likes my blog) for nominating me for the Best Education Blog in the 2007 Weblog Awards. If you’d like to drop by and hit the little plus button next to her comment, that’d be dope. If not, keep reading anyways. The best is yet to come.

The best way to turn me off from any argument is to magically introduce some mental condition. Ever since I was in college, I found myself very critical of the increasing amount of mental / developmental disorders, especially in an age where the more conditions you can come up with, the more money you can get for your “exclusive” research.

Studies have shown that there’s been a huge increase of mental disorders and chronic diseases in the United States, and the first two factors commonly associated with this are 1) the ability to see the symptoms and treat them early on and 2) the higher risk behaviors people are taking on at a much younger age. Of course, it also stems from the other, and more understood factors like birth conditions, environment, dietary habits, family situations, and genetics.

But the not-so-secret secret for these treatments has a lot to do with people’s self-interest. If you can make someone’s adjustments to society’s ills into a mental disease, then you can look like you’re doing something about it.

Case 1:

When inner-city teachers who have detrimental classroom management or have a negative outlook on the children they teach get fed up with their most extreme cases of misbehavior, they turn to the psychiatrists in the building and say “He / she’s got ADHD, and I can’t take it anymore!” I personally have referred a few children here and there, with much reluctance and after serious discussions with them and their parents. I don’t pull the trigger unless I know something is severely wrong or the kid asks me to refer him. Yet some teachers just want to point and scream ADHD like it’s a witch hunt. I mean, with some of the living conditions these kids have, it’s no wonder why they would go crazy.

Case 2:

The drug market is at an all-time high. There’s a pill for any and every disease, condition, problem, and quandary. Drug companies profit off of commercials that exacerbate the problems in your life (Do you feel depressed? Lonely? Out of sorts?). People in America are working harder than ever at lesser wages with less sleep, less family time, and everything from gas and food to health care and housing become more expensive. So when we sit down to watch our favorite TV shows, go on the Web, or read our afternoon paper, we see these ads telling us how their drug will miraculously cure us of what ails us. Then, they give the drug a fancy new name so it sells better because a name with all those x’s, y’s, and h’s won’t do well. What’s more, many of the drugs that we end up intaking actually have chemicals that keep us dependent on them, so what does that say? Mind control through chemicals isn’t far fetched …

Case 3:

Understanding Case 1 and 2, we can see how people are quick to find new ways to disorder and prognosticate our entire realities. If you’re having problems with math, it’s not that you haven’t been shown how to do it, it’s that you have a mental disease called Mathematical Anxiety Disorder (MAD). If you’ve experienced a series of oppressive events and still live in a rather dismal existence, the policies that keep that sort of environment together isn’t the problem, it’s a mental condition called Poverty Induced Trauma (PIT). If you have an inordinate prejudice against someone else because of a combination of culture, ethnicity, and skin color, then you’re not a racist. You have a mental condition called Ridiculous Assumptions Causing Extremism (RACE).

And I hate to be the one to point these things out, because I’d be offending those who believe something different than me (ha), but everything we’ve done since the dawn of our existence has been about translating our realities for our own minds. We have the opportunity to redefine our existences, but we also have to outline the obstacles and act upon the forces preventing us from making those changes.

The Miseducation of the NegroWhen we happened upon this Earth, everything we understood and felt about the world was told to us. Blue was blue, and there was no denying that. 1+1=2 and that was that. We accept a lot of things as fact and the rationales we assume come from the many experts and authorities we have in our lives, yet when we grow up, we start to see the cracks in the authorities’ assumptions and make our own wedges within them. Contrary to what some of you believe, ADHD isn’t endemic to Black and Latino children, poverty does affect the supposed opportunities we have, and race exists, and a big of its existence is mental, something we can’t undermine.

Like Dr. Carter G. Woodson, one of the greatest authors I’ve ever read, said in his seminal work The Mis-Education of the Negro,

“When you control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his ‘proper place’ and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary.”

jose, who might be crazy himself …

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A Synopsis of The Road Less Wanted

by Jose on October 15, 2007 · 24 comments

in Uncategorized

kidscrying.jpgLast week, I spoke extensively about one student who had some serious behavioral problems in his classroom, and how that’s a microcosm of what he’s going through at home. Whenever I look at kids like him, I know how to approach them because I’ve been witness to that environment. Unfortunately, because of program restrictions, I no longer work with the child after-school, but best believe I’m still paying attention to his progress.

After all, many of our children come from environmentally abusive backgrounds, and environmental issues in the urban ghetto usually get glossed over. People are quick to blame their environment on the victim when almost all of the evidence shows that our condition stems from oppressive policies stemming back to when this country was first founded. It’s hard to point a finger when the policies don’t just stem from one particular face, but a whole institution. That’s the critical part of understanding how our children can be constantly subjected to the road less wanted.

For instance, people blame poor urban families for their own health issues, everything from diabetes, heart failure, asthma, obesity, and high blood pressure. Yet, the foods we get here are usually in poor condition. I thought the food here was alright, until I visited the Farmer’s Market on 14th St., where I was astonished to see real and fresh vegetables. Real lettuce, with actually red tomatoes, and truly green broccoli and ripe pickles. Natural apple juice, and freshly picked oranges. Usually the first stop that these items make is the more affluent places, where the customers presumably live a healthier lifestyle but conversely where the produce makers will make top dollar for their produce. Meanwhile, a poor urban mother could a) settle for the less than pleasurable and unkempt vegetable aisle or b) go to the canned foods and boxed food aisles. After all, processed foods are much cheaper than organic food, even when the organic food’s quality has been severely diminished.

School LunchThen there’s the issues our children’s parents go through. Imagine all the history of denigration they’ve gone through: Reaganomics, crack infestation, needle and blue cap infiltration, gun warfare, massive rape and abuse, police brutality, immigration, English acclamation and retention, prison industrial complex promotions, rent hikes, gentrification, asbestos paint, lead-tainted water, declining hospital service, and abject poverty … and that’s just in my neighborhood.

Many of them have a good from 8-6, then come home and work on their families until 11pm. We have Third World conditions right here in America, and Hurricane Katrina only highlighted that temporarily. Little do people know that the Lower 9th Ward wasn’t pretty before the Hurricane, so what does that say about America’s response to places like that, Watts in California, East St. Louis, Southside of Chicago, Chinatown in NYC, and a thousand other places where poor children of all colors are all subjected to a lack of money and hence care.

Yet, when the children get to school, malnourished and uncared for, they act out. They’re acting out, stealing from each other and screaming at their teachers. Of course, that’s when teachers and administrators who don’t understand where these loveless children come from want to treat them for every possible disorder and dysfunction on Earth. I admit that some of them that do come from this background really need more substantial help than any teacher in the current public school system can offer. Many of these children don’t really have a disorder, and it’s been proven that if you just talk to some of these kids like human beings, those disorders start going away. And even if they’re not getting mistreated for some disability, they’re getting mistreated in the classroom. Some people who don’t belong near a classroom but see the value in looking like they’re making a difference let their inherent classism and racism shine brightest and thus build mistrust for an education for kids who need it.

None of this is new. To the contrary, the miseducation of our youth has gone on for centuries. And people wonder why poor people won’t take out loans to get a new home since money’s meant nothing but trouble for them. Pregnancy and STI prevention information isn’t a deterrent to those who have no self-esteem or self-worth. Thug rap went from reporting what’s going on in the streets to just living life on the fast lane because there’s no future so they live for the present. Colleges are easier to get into but harder to successfully get out of with the increasingly expensive tuitions and steady drop of governmental financial aid (which works well for a booming college loan market). With slave wages for the increasing population of immigrants from the West, South, AND East and a depreciating job market, it’s no wonder why the rich continuously get richer while the rest of us unknowingly have remained on the same plateau of poverty.

2PacThe one argument that everyone uses against me when I discuss these multifaceted issues is “But Jose, you made it. You lived in the same environment these people did, and yet look at you now. You’re successful and have a promising future. Why can’t they make it?” And usually, this person either comes from a household where the parents are successful and have been for generations, or a family whose grandparents were successful, and that story didn’t pass onto the person who asked me.

Their point usually starts with how some families they’ve seen concentrate more on getting 200$ sneakers an rims for their cars instead of investing in the stock market. They’ll see people rockin’ gold chains and wearing inappropriate clothing wherever they go. What I also believe they see is exactly what they want to see and not what’s truly there.

I contend that the factors that led me to where I am today were nothing short of fortunate. I had a mother who, with her flaws, pushed me in the right direction, a set of schools that were top-notch in their own respect, whether private or public, a good amount of people who believed in my own ability, and a genetic intelligence and stubbornness that could have prevented me from making some of the decisions I made but they did. If anything in this paradigm fell out of place, I wouldn’t have been as successful.

These opportunities I’ve worked hard for and have been granted haven’t made me any more complicit with what’s around me. I still struggle with different health issues like many of my neighborhood brethren do, and it’s something that I have more information on now. People don’t often break that seal until they’ve tasted a certain echelon of society. I am a firm believer in self-determination and making something out of nothing, but that’s exactly it. I don’t believe in alchemy. As a math person, I think there are simple solutions to some of the problems that afflict us, and it’ll be worth it if we can find those solutions.

Not everyone’s has been as fortunate as I am, though, which is why I fight for them. The images we see of the bling and the pomp are usually a very small percentage of truly poor people, and that’s what we don’t really see. Many of the little gadgets we see the kids have are second hand illegal devices, and liquor stores on every corner surface because it’s the one legal potion people use to get away from their daunting troubles. Change doesn’t happen by just sitting there; we need to be that change.

jose, a proud supporter of blog action day …

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