Baltimorei

[iris lilies]

Iris, my apologies, I was intending to respond to CathyA and you separately and instead responded only to you. My comments were intended to be a response to her thoughts on DNA.

No problem Jp.

[Yossarian]

I never said just give people money.

No one said you did. Great, now that we have that out of the way, the point of what I posted was that it obviously takes more than money, but the intangibles are really hard to figure out. It's the same mess for crime and jobs that have both been brought up in this thread. So far no one has found a good solution, which is why we end up with the default of locking them up.

Re linked here if you missed it: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/op...erty.html?_r=0

[ApatheticNoMore]

There's not enough jobs now, look at labor force participation rates since 2008, down down down. That's working age people not working. Some of it may be be people getting more education and starting work much later. But no I don't believe everyone just decided to become a housewife or retired early. You could look at other numbers that are more optimistic (I suspect more gamed). Yes people in the ghetto may be more trapped in poverty (although income mobility in general in the u.s. is pretty low) so there are trapping factors there, I'm quite sure there's some degree of racism as well.

So with no jobs, what's even the point? But there are other problems than jobs. Yea there are some non-profits, often government funded, that try to deal with childhood abuse and so on, help abusive families not be so, teach better ways for parents to deal with their problems than abuse, provide mental health, help troubled kids, it's of course aimed at the family level. Of course dysfunctional families cut across income levels, but the poor need more financial subsidy for mental health care. That's one aspect. Maybe some of the government money and increased spending on poverty, although you may not directly see it, is going to this now (oh how horrible /sarc). Really if so it seems to me an incredibly positive development then for human welfare, even if there's still too few jobs. This is a huge part of the quality of the family relationship.

The problems do go deeper at the schools where half the kids fail to show up, the kids are often all from a different father, they live in neighborhoods that sometimes look like they were bombed where dogs run feral down the streets etc.., utter neglect.

A lot of middle class or wealthier background can't be reduced to norms either (at least if we interpret the phrase to be morals, however if we interpret the phrase to encompass much more practical heuristics then maybe - the term seems too ambiguous to use). Because a lot is just practical knowledge, there's some really obvious stuff, if your social circle is middle class you will get advice on finding middle class jobs say (oh you might also be able to directly network to one of course, but even without that). Such practical stuff isn't picked up by brains in vats taking courses in moral philosophy. Are people individuals or nodes in a network of relationships? Both of course. But the latter usually gets short shrift.

Better adjustment to mainstream modern American society sometimes strikes me as "well adjusted to a profoundly sick society" (the lunatics who think they have it all figured out because their bank account says so - counting their worthiness in $ signs- a sure a sign of barking mad insanity). But clearly generational poverty isn't an optimum mode of being either.

[catherine]

Great post, ANM.

On another note, I'm so happy Bernie Sanders is running for President. We all know that he doesn't have a chance in hell of winning, but I wonder what will happen if he gets the HUGE groundswell of support from the grassroots, which I'm eagerly anticipating. At least the run will provide a platform to address some of these endemic issues that need to be addressed, and he almost definitely won't be in pockets of the moneychangers. I've donated my $15--so I'm counted among the many whose small contributions have given him a remarkable $1.5M start in the first 24 hours of his campaign.

[flowerseverywhere]

http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/02/us/lor...ore/index.html

here is a fascinating article written by a man who grew up in a different Baltimore, and he talks about the absence of older men in the community and its effect.

[Yossarian]

http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/02/us/lor...ore/index.html

here is a fascinating article written by a man who grew up in a different Baltimore, and he talks about the absence of older men in the community and its effect.

That was good. But I'm not sure where it leads. I know in my city they spent millions building public recreation facilities a few years ago. It was a total bust. The facilities either went unused or became unsafe.

I liked his perpective, but there was one thing that jumped out- when he quoted the guy who said "they won't educate you, but they will incarcerate you." Really? I think the other article says Baltimore has the second highest spending per student, something like $15k per. If students don't show up, what are the teachers supposed to do?

[catherine]

We had Abbott vs. Burke in NJ, in which the State ruled it unconstitutional that 28 districts received vast inequalities of funding, basically because of our crazy way of funding the school system through property taxes. So funding was required to fill big gaps in the inequality of the system. Christie cut back the funding, but later on, again, the State said that the funding cuts caused "irreparable harm" to the students and mandated a restoration of funding.

I don't think JUST money is the answer, though. How much better now are Paterson and Newark and Camden? But in another post, bae mentioned Jonathan Kozol--I read his book Savage Inequalities, and it's simply not fair that some districts get the best resources, while inner city, poor kids are lucky to get textbooks that are less than 20 years old and desks that have 4 legs, and a host of other things that we middle class folk take for granted.

However, in addition, the schools need the support of the community. They need parents who care and show up for parent-teacher conferences. Parents who help with homework. Parents who encourage higher education. Unfortunately, all too often, they don't get that parental support--life for a parent or parents is too stressful if you have a life like Miss Cellane described where you are working 60 hours a week and still can't cover the basics.

I also read the book Small Victories by Samuel G. Freedman which is another sad story of education in poor neighborhoods. The take-away I got from that book is, you can plant all the seeds of hope you want as a teacher, but what really gets watered in poor neighborhoods is despair.

[ApatheticNoMore]

Won't educate you, I do wonder how much education he hoped for? Through college? Yea that's not free.

But as for K-12, I may wonder if money could solve it now even if it was given because school districts self-segregate by class (and to a lesser degree by race). Period. There's serious path dependency at a certain point, even if some of the self-segregation was originally based on lesser resources (and though resources and getting their kids the best is probably a much stronger motive, there's probably some influence of racism).

This is the way it works here: parents who are concerned with their children's education (this usually looks like overly concerned but it's the way the game is played) try to buy a home in a "good public school district", that is unless they've decided on the private school route. Homes in such districts will sell for a pretty premium. If you ain't got the doe, ray, me - you are out of the running for a house in a "good school district" unless you can manage to rent there for less or something. So the better off parents that care about education cluster in certain areas, whereas the parents who don't care or no matter how much they care can not afford the price of admission live elsewhere. Those parents in better school districts have great advantage in terms of how much peer support their kids will have for education, sometimes peer influence overrides the best intentioned parental support. It's a class system, that self-perpetuates. It's so obvious equality of opportunity doesn't exist from the absolute obsession in middle class parent talk of "good school districts" (this is different than saying absolutely zero opportunity exists for those in less good school districts, that depends on parental support and a lot of other factors, it's merely saying it's not equal).

What about teachers? Hmm, differ greatly probably. Some I've met won't work particularly bad schools, in fact they aim for the much better schools. In the very worst schools, most quit within or before a year. Some heroes tough it out, but know that self-sacrificing heroism is probably unsustainable over the long term as they feel beyond burned out.

[bae]

Interesting take on some of Baltimore's issues: the absence of men in the community:


http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/02/us/lor...ore/index.html

[iris lilies]

Interesting take on some of Baltimore's issues: the absence of men in the community:


http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/02/us/lor...ore/index.html

Does this suggest that fathers are just as important if not more important than gubmnt money?

i am shocked at this concept, shocked I tell you.