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“Who Will Tell the Children?”

Leonard’s commentary on the plight of minority youth in New York who “…we’ve already thrown…away.” He talks about NYC Police using high school students in line-ups…in one case, students from a special education program! Police blame the issue on misunderstanding the authority of School Principles. Leonard’s retort is, “Well, no, that isn’t the problem. The problem is depersonalization and contempt.” Well said.

He then riffs to the poor state of education for minority students in NYC:

Perhaps the child in you recalls cherished teachers in classes that weren't in overcrowded buildings that weren’t falling down in neighborhoods that didn’t look like Beirut, when education was about distinctions and connections, about surprise, wonder, passion, regret and citizenship, instead of drugs and guns…

Written in the 1990’s and still completely applicable today.

Great passage near the end, “In the narcoleptic reign of Ronald the Reposeful, the poor were shunned, and funds for them slashed, and we actually seemed to want to be a culture that measures everybody by his ability to produce wealth…”

Kaiser Soze would have never made it in the Facebook society:

New word: “volunteers” = children who are too emotionally damaged to protest (in the NYC Public School System of the 1990s)

New learning: In the ‘90s, 700,000 students graduated from High School each year without having learned to read in their 12 years in the system.