Regular readers know that I write a lot of articles characterized by not entirely manufactured cynicism. There is only one thing that can erase that cynicism: Tuesday nights.
Every Tuesday night, I take a shuttle with 10 other students to a church basement where we meet with a dozen teenage boys. They are all juvenile delinquents, on parole after a stint in a juvenile facility.
We go there every week to teach them math and reading. Some are only a grade or two behind, but others are seemingly hopeless cases: 15-year-olds with second grade reading abilities, high school seniors who can’t multiply.
And every week, they are the ones teaching us.
They come ready to work and eager to learn, undeterred by years of being ignored by our education system. They demonstrate that they are not, are not, are NOT stupid. They are underdeveloped, they are distrusting of the authority that pushed them into a corner and out of society’s good graces and then punished them for it and they are generally unwilling to lean on anyone else for fear of once again having to pick themselves up — but they are not stupid.
They show an earnestness and enthusiasm for learning that rivals and even surpasses that at the university. We lament our homework and finals while these kids would give anything to be in our shoes, able to complain about a college education.
The 15-year-old I work with couldn’t add and could barely read. He was, however, exceedingly polite, pulling out chairs, holding doors, saying thank you after each session, even walking me to the door. But they don’t care about that in state schools. No sir, they’re teaching for a test, and understanding be damned. He actually picked it up quickly: In only a few sessions, he was able to read entire articles and write about them. He’s a smart kid, and the potential was always there. All he ever needed was someone to care enough to sit down with him and help.
Kids are being left behind in our ill-fated and misguided quest to standardize the measures of achievement that dictate funding. They fall behind and no one has the willingness or the time to help them catch up. Suddenly, they go from children with budding potential to chores, people to be tolerated until they can be shoved off onto the next grade.
I am already tired of digging out of this hole. I already know our system seems willing, even eager, to look the other way as kids are pushed through school, as though a diploma is all that matters. The end can never justify the means when the means require not teaching a child math, reading, or understanding, but that they are an expendable tool whose sole worth comes in the form of a test score.
Even now, society’s continued refusal to acknowledge its failure of these kids is evidenced by yet another failure: The program through which we mentor these kids has lost funding, leaving them once again to fend for themselves. Is it any surprise that they lash out at a society that has proven, again and again, that it wants to forget about them?
I’m not saying that every juvenile delinquent is a misunderstood angel with miles of potential. I am, however, saying that there are far too many diamonds in the rough to allow a broken system to keep derailing the lives of genuinely good kids.
Bethany Offutt is a sophomore criminology and criminal justice and psychology major. She can be reached at offutt at umdbk dot com.
