Synergy

     We know a man who trains and supports police chiefs, he has found that the new recruits are soft and unable to handle the pressures of the crime, attitudes and chaos of the inner city. His wife and I spoke on this subject often as we mother our boys tenderly and our spouses carry much bigger sticks when it came to working with the boys. No doubt, in the beauty of God's design for children to have both a mother and a father by God's grace, our boys will grow to be strong and courageous, yet kind and understanding. 

     If such a large percentage of crime in the inner city is black on black crime, would it be best to have black officers and black jurors who preside over the cities? Of course not everyone in the inner city is black so there would be folks of other races who also need to be represented in the city.  

     Our government needs to hear ideas as to how to reintegrate folks after release from the penitentary (programs like pitbulls and parolees)?  It occurs to me that when I hear that some folks who enter the system say things like this is the first hot meal I've had or it's the first time we've had electricity. Or the story last year, about a man who had never had a pair of socks in his life before an officer purchased him a pair during the winter.  That there is a serious disparity between wealthy and poor America. The introduction of more and more technology only widens the gap. Are we getting computers into the classrooms of the inner city schools with the same passion we are into the smaller villages? And if not what good is no child left behind? There are children left behind because they lack access. Shoot some of them lack doors on the bathroom stalls in the bathrooms. Tell me, if a child has to use the restroom and has to have an adult follow them into a restroom without doors on the stalls. Is that child comfortable and ready to learn?  No, that child's dignity is infringed upon. Every child should be able to use a public bathroom with a door. If the school cannot afford a door for a restroom stall, how will they afford to keep the children up to speed through technology? The desks, and books at the school I am writing about were similar to what I had 25+ years earlier as a child myself. Where our wealthier schools are purchasing Houghton Mufflin and Scholastic books with regularity, this school was using Dick and Jane books-with noone who looked like any of the children in the class I was in for the day.

     There are some excellent schools out their in the black community that encourage excellence. Some are private schools. Can we create more opportunity and access of this type throughout the nation? 

     Another oddity and less than wise use of government spending, recently there was a study done on gas (flatulence) why anyone wanted to study this or how they did it is halarious to think about. But seriously, how important was this  study and what did it lead to in our learning. Wouldn't money for studies like this be better spent on assisting some of the schools that are in need of opportunity. 

     The drop out rate is very large in the inner city-what if opportunities were made available to work after the age of 16. Maybe the student isn't motivated to rise to college attendance, but these same students could be motivated to put in what it took to achieve one of the other options available to them. Could we revitalize a farming industry,community gardens, mechanic industry, arts, private shops, training in computer repair, apprenticeships, parenting classes etc. Because just maybe the best thing, the successful thing someone can do is be a good parent to their children.  And outside the city in the country many folks might also appreciate this freedom in the form living off the land like they do on Alaska the last Frontier. I remember multiple times a year while I was being raised living in a rural area, that the hunters took off school during hunting to fill their freezers for the winter, and farmers took off to harvest/etc during certain seasons.  

      A couple years ago, there was a program on tv where white folks traded places with black folks for a week or so. Some folks ideas were transformed through the experience, others ideas were not. How often or have our billionaires dressed down and walked through town and experienced what those who live there experience. I'd like to see Donald Trump leave his bank roll and home and go dressed down into the city, compete for a job and while there come up with some brillant ideas that would help America's inner city population. That would make some great reality tv but only after he began coming up with ideas on how to lift those who are lower.