CDZ Is it just me?

[koshergrl]

You stop legal guns from turning into illegal guns by keeping criminals in prison where they belong. Most gun crimes are committed by people with extensive criminal histories.

What is your source for the statement that "most gun crimes are committed by people with extensive criminal histories"?

We already have the highest incarceration rate on the planet and it is costing us billions. How many more people must we lock up to stop the use of guns to commit crimes?

I take it you're in favor of not putting criminals in prison. Go figure.

I do think we put too many people in prison for too long for some crimes. A large part of the prison population is serving time for non-violent drug offenses. Locking them up, along with the guys who are behind in child support, couldn't pay a fine, embezzlers etc. don't use guns, may not even own guns. Their incarceration has no effect on the process that turns legal guns into illegal guns.

You have tried to deflect the issue away from the lax gun laws that allow illegal guns to be created from legal guns effortlessly. The criminal justice system has nothing to do with gun show loopholes, fuzzy background checks, trivial dealer licensing etc. etc. I know why you don't: you can't. It's been a lot of fun anyhow...

Your entire post there is logical fallacy. You state as fact things that are NOT fact, and move on from there. There isn't even anything of enough value to respond to...none of it is true.

You say my post is a logical fallacy but trying to explain gun issues to gun fetishists isn't a logical fallacy it is a chronological fallacy, that is, a waste of time. You say I state as facts things that are not facts but you don't tell me what facts are not facts, so I take it you can't remember what they were. You say there isn't anything of enough value to respond to, then you respond with your witty and compassionate analysis of my post. I thank you from taking time away from your busy day to show us all how your mind works. It's fascinating.

You've sourced nothing, and you jump from one lie to the next, as if you've actually made a point. You haven't. The whole concept that most of the people in prison shouldn't be there is just so much garbage. The reason gun crime is such an issue in our inner cities is because we DON'T imprison people long enough. Almost all gun crime is perpetrated by KNOWN CRIMINALS. That is, people with past convictions. If they were still in jail, they wouldn't be shooting up their neighborhoods.

 

[320 Years of History]

...

We have created a bizarre distillation process by which we have purified poverty. The "permanent underclass" is the term used to describe the end result of this process. Anyone with talent and drive gets up and out, and leaves behind the dysfunctional ones. This is all an unintended consequence of doing something good. Removing the barriers to upward mobility for black people.

Where we go from here is the question. Early childhood education is a step in the right direction, imo.

Interesting perspective....

Based on and accepting the premise that removing the barriers to upward mobility allows talented and driven folks to escape the "depressed" areas from within which they developed their drive and nurtured their talent, it seems that a plausible inference from that premise (assuming it holds true) is that "underclass" folks' (no matter their ethnicity/race) being "clustered tightly," if you will, results in higher rates of violence than would otherwise occur if, rather than focusing on racial integration, we (as a nation/culture) focused our efforts on establishing economic integration. Do you agree, disagree and/or see any plausibility in that inference?

Being a mentor to several low income, low hope, and little to no access to "organically-arising-opportunity " kids, I have observed that merely by having access to mainstream modes of perception and thought, my mentorees have come to exhibit behavioral patterns that are the exception among their colocated peers. My own kids, on the other hand, have never really been exposed to anyone other than high achieving role models and peers, be it neighbors, their mother's husband, me, their grandparents, teachers, classmates, friends and close acquaintances, camp counselors, etc.

My own kids' experiences, and my own for that matter, suggest (albeit anecdotally) that if one is only aware of "modes A and B" for doing things, one won't ever consider that other ways exist and work. I suspect the same thing occurs among folks having less fortunate circumstances than my kids and I.

If one accepts the idea of attempting economic integration, the next step is to consider how to implement such a thing. It's certainly so that jurisdictions across the nation provide housing subsidies and build housing for low income folks. That could conceivably happen such that all middle or upper middle income areas also include some (I don't know how much) housing that could be earmarked for low income folks (whatever their race) to live in.

A problem with the idea is that "stuff," besides just housing, in close proximity to wealthy areas tends also to be expensive, and that would mean that even being able to live among upwardly mobile and/or generally higher achieving folks, low income folks might have to incur high transportation costs (and the related cost in time) to purchase routine goods and services. That may be a minor problem of no real import; I don't know. Were the idea attempted in my neighborhood, it would not be a problem; more affordable shops aren't that far away seeing as I live in the middle of the city and one doesn't have to have a car.

There will surely be other problems to overcome. The one thing I don't see as a problem is the monetary cost of implementing the idea; the U.S. has more than enough money to make such a thing possible, at least on a trial basis to see what happens.

My gut tells me that if such a program were somewhat pricier than are the current aid programs, that'd be okay if it is effective at moving tens of millions of people off the "dole rolls" and into the tax base. Just toying with the numbers, and I'm doing this "quick and dirty" as I write and don't know what I'll find....let's say that of the 46.5 million folks who receive welfare, half of them enter economic integration program and "succeed" (the rest continue to receive benefits) and as a result move into at least the top 25% income bracket. (I used the~$36K/year and ~$75K/year salary marks -- the minimum salaries for the respective earnings quartiles -- and the 14.3% and 16.4% tax rates, respectively, shown at the link for those sums) That would mean at the least, we'd add between ~$103B and ~$246B to the tax base per year, more as their incomes increase over time. Based on a U.C. Berkeley study, we spend ~$153B per year on welfare programs (Medicaid, CHIP, TANF, EITC, and food stamp programs).

Looking at that "quick and dirty sniff test," the idea seems at least worth exploring. The key would be "how much more, if at all, it would cost to implement the idea of economic integration. The idea seems to have the potential to boost the fortunes of poor people -- black, white, Latino, etc. -- and do so and do so for less than the cost to keeping the very same people on the "dole rolls." Now I think the real gains come when the former welfare recipients have kids and their kids have kids. That's when we begin to have seriously huge quantities of folks who begin life on the "right foot" and remain as contributors.

So when you ask "what do we do about it?", the answer, IMO, has to be that we take a long view toward overcoming the problem. The problem will persist as long as we take the approach of "don't let them starve today" and stop there, which is basically the theme of our current approach to aid programs. Truly, for you, I and other adults like us, I don't foresee the cost of aid going down in our lives, or in the near term of them. We can establish foundations that allow that to be so for our kids and grandkids. That to me is more "worth it" than is whether "things" cost me a bit more or "a lot" (not "a lot" more) now.


Red:
I have to agree with that. I'm hard pressed to identify a good reason for delay and education (but not indoctrination) is rarely a bad thing.

"Based on and accepting the premise that removing the barriers to upward mobility allows talented and driven folks to escape the "depressed" areas from within which they developed their drive and nurtured their talent, it seems that a plausible inference from that premise (assuming it holds true) is that "underclass" folks' (no matter their ethnicity/race) being "clustered tightly," if you will, results in higher rates of violence than would otherwise occur if, rather than focusing on racial integration, we (as a nation/culture) focused our efforts on establishing economic integration. Do you agree, disagree and/or see any plausibility in that inference?"

I guess I would agree to some extent. Concentration is the term most often used for forcing unwanted persons into specific areas. There is also a natural tendency to cluster, for reasons of establishing stores and religious centers.

There are a number of processes involved here. They are all specific to the era and circumstances of each wave. The Chinese, Eastern Europeans, Western Europeans, all arrived with different levels of support and suitability to assimilate with the crazy quilt of American society. They had different standards of behavior which no doubt affected the level of violence that resulted from the mean streets each group had to contend with. West Side Story covered that one.

African people in America is a completely different subject. They are not immigrants. The moment a group of immigrants arrive in a country they start to form support groups for the next group of immigrants. Immigrants have some measure of family support. Immigrants have cultural continuity and traditions. The freed slaves had none of this. No support. No 40 acres and a mule. They were in a war torn region of the country which had gone from being the richest part of the US to the poorest in four years time. They were at 100% poverty.

Despite that, and the systematic impediments which were in place until the 1970s, 75% of Black people in America have risen above poverty. The 25% who remain are less likely to organize their own rise.

As far as the rest of what you've written goes, I think mentoring is fine and beneficial. There's not enough of it though, and it can't begin early enough to make a substantial difference. Racial and economic integration are both essential. I don't think you can achieve one without the other. The costs of poverty are undeniable, and the incentives to address the problems are pretty obvious.

As far as "red" goes, it's a theory. It makes sense to me, but it's just a theory. The main difficulty is that it takes a long time to show results. Politicians can't brag about them quickly enough, so they're not interested. The word gap is a chasm. You can state the problem easily enough, eliminate the word gap, but how? Mentoring kids when they're 11 won't make a dent in it. Living near rich people won't do it.

First, TY first for a direct and comprehensive reply to my question.

I agree with all of what you said except the bit about mentoring's inability to make a substantial difference. My own experience with my mentorees suggests something very different: it's never to late to make a sea change's worth of positive difference. I have only one measure to go by -- academic performance -- but in the past 20 years, every one of "my kids" has gone from being a D- to B- student to being, without exception, straight A students. They've picked up other things too, but that's the one that is the primary goal of my efforts as it's the one that I can maintain even when I'm out of town. (thank goodness for the WWW and telephone)

The oldest "kids" whom I mentored are now enjoying the start of great careers in engineering, medicine, and architecture, accounting and i-banking. Given the humble beginnings from which they came -- heck, their "hood" peers with whom I had little to no relationship with barely begin to understand what it is they do -- I count that as having made a significant difference.

Truly, I'm more impressed with my mentorees' growth than I am of my birth children's. Those poor kids had so much "catching up" to do in order to get where they are, but the most important thing they've gained along the way, and that nobody whom they knew before me could have given them, is firsthand knowledge of the process by which one can be successful. Having it, they will pass it on to their kids, and that means that the cycle of poverty and hopelessness, for them at least, has come to an end. That is perhaps the most significant difference.

Sidebar:

FWIW, for anyone who wants to be a mentor. There are just a few things that one needs to be/have:

• Unyielding commitment to helping one's charge(s) be successful; you have to give them almost the same priority in your life that you'd give your own kids.
• Personal experience at almost always being successful at whatever you've tried to do
• Problem solving skills; knowing how to figure out what "an answer" is even when you have no idea of what it is or where it is to be found. This more than anything else is the key skill that you will help your mentorees develop. Quite often, you'll do so by leading the kids through the process of discovering how to arrive at an answer using the materials their school has provided to them.
• A truly logical mind
• Strong communication skills; this isn't just reading or writing well, it's also knowing what and when to share information, finding ways to deliver messages/information so that it'll be received and retained
• Patience
• Creativity -- this comes into play insofar as you'll want to never let a "teachable moment" go by unused, but you'll also need to find ways to do it so that it doesn't feel like another lesson to the kids.
• Flexibility

Trust me, just like raising one's own kids, mentoring is a lot of fun. You don't have to do it with an organization, but you do have to find kids who (1) need your input and, (2) want it for no matter how much they need it, you cannot shove "how to be successful" down their throat. If they don't want it, it won't happen.​

End of Sidebar

 

[koshergrl]

"...there appears to be one constant in these numbers and that's the criminal records of both the perpetrators and victims."

"Mallory O'Brien, of the Milwaukee Homicide Review Commission, tracks those numbers for the city of Milwaukee.
"(About) 94 percent of our victims have an arrest history and 93 percent of our suspects have an arrest history," O'Brien said."

As Gun-Related Deaths Increase, Prior Criminal Records Is Common Link Among Shooters, Victims

 

[320 Years of History]

"...there appears to be one constant in these numbers and that's the criminal records of both the perpetrators and victims."

"Mallory O'Brien, of the Milwaukee Homicide Review Commission, tracks those numbers for the city of Milwaukee.
"(About) 94 percent of our victims have an arrest history and 93 percent of our suspects have an arrest history," O'Brien said."

As Gun-Related Deaths Increase, Prior Criminal Records Is Common Link Among Shooters, Victims

I think the gist of that is this: once a mess, always a mess. For adults, I think that tends to be so more often than it isn't so.

 

[koshergrl]

"Studies conducted at both the local and national level indicate the overwhelming majority of murders are committed by people with previous criminal records. Even a significant percentage of homicide victims themselves have criminal records. " GunCite: Gun Control - Gun Homicides

 

[Unkotare]

It is only I who is beginning to feel that:

• Being in Chicago while black has a pretty high risk of being fatal?
• Possession of a weapon anywhere in the U.S. while black is criminally fatal?
• Death by cop is moving "up the ladder" as one of the most common causes of death?

It's just you, and a small minority.

 

[koshergrl]

"...there appears to be one constant in these numbers and that's the criminal records of both the perpetrators and victims."

"Mallory O'Brien, of the Milwaukee Homicide Review Commission, tracks those numbers for the city of Milwaukee.
"(About) 94 percent of our victims have an arrest history and 93 percent of our suspects have an arrest history," O'Brien said."

As Gun-Related Deaths Increase, Prior Criminal Records Is Common Link Among Shooters, Victims

I think the gist of that is this: once a mess, always a mess. For adults, I think that tends to be so more often than it isn't so.

Well my point is that the best way to address the gun violence problem is to put criminals in jail, and leave them there, since almost all the gun violence that is taking place is CRIMINALS shooting people...often other CRIMINALS.

 

[320 Years of History]

Well my point is that the best way to address the gun violence problem is to put criminals in jail, and leave them there, since almost all the gun violence that is taking place is CRIMINALS shooting people...often other CRIMINALS.

Okay. Intriguing proposal. I infer from it that you recommend sentence lengths be extended and opportunities for parole be reduced. Are those accurate inferences to draw as being intended and assured outcomes of the action items -- (1) put criminals in jail, and (2) leave them there -- you identified?

If "no," please clarify. If "yes," please indicate:

• what your revised minimum sentences would be and to what crimes they would apply
• what would be your criteria for obtaining parole
• how many new prisons per year/decade whatever -- some sort of time frame -- you estimate would be needed
• the estimated cost difference between what we spend now and what your proposal would cost in terms of:
  • direct costs -- for example, costs for finding and capturing an even greater quantity of criminals, longer incarceration periods, penal facility accommodations, and personnel costs, etc.
  • indirect costs -- lower medical care costs for injured victims, the eventual decline of criminal persons "in the wild", administrative costs, etc.

It's your proposal and, as I said, it's intriguing. I'm interested in seeing what, based on a "quick and dirty" quantitative estimate of what the efficacy might be of implementing it.

 

[Elvis Obama]

...

We have created a bizarre distillation process by which we have purified poverty. The "permanent underclass" is the term used to describe the end result of this process. Anyone with talent and drive gets up and out, and leaves behind the dysfunctional ones. This is all an unintended consequence of doing something good. Removing the barriers to upward mobility for black people.

Where we go from here is the question. Early childhood education is a step in the right direction, imo.

Interesting perspective....

Based on and accepting the premise that removing the barriers to upward mobility allows talented and driven folks to escape the "depressed" areas from within which they developed their drive and nurtured their talent, it seems that a plausible inference from that premise (assuming it holds true) is that "underclass" folks' (no matter their ethnicity/race) being "clustered tightly," if you will, results in higher rates of violence than would otherwise occur if, rather than focusing on racial integration, we (as a nation/culture) focused our efforts on establishing economic integration. Do you agree, disagree and/or see any plausibility in that inference?

Being a mentor to several low income, low hope, and little to no access to "organically-arising-opportunity " kids, I have observed that merely by having access to mainstream modes of perception and thought, my mentorees have come to exhibit behavioral patterns that are the exception among their colocated peers. My own kids, on the other hand, have never really been exposed to anyone other than high achieving role models and peers, be it neighbors, their mother's husband, me, their grandparents, teachers, classmates, friends and close acquaintances, camp counselors, etc.

My own kids' experiences, and my own for that matter, suggest (albeit anecdotally) that if one is only aware of "modes A and B" for doing things, one won't ever consider that other ways exist and work. I suspect the same thing occurs among folks having less fortunate circumstances than my kids and I.

If one accepts the idea of attempting economic integration, the next step is to consider how to implement such a thing. It's certainly so that jurisdictions across the nation provide housing subsidies and build housing for low income folks. That could conceivably happen such that all middle or upper middle income areas also include some (I don't know how much) housing that could be earmarked for low income folks (whatever their race) to live in.

A problem with the idea is that "stuff," besides just housing, in close proximity to wealthy areas tends also to be expensive, and that would mean that even being able to live among upwardly mobile and/or generally higher achieving folks, low income folks might have to incur high transportation costs (and the related cost in time) to purchase routine goods and services. That may be a minor problem of no real import; I don't know. Were the idea attempted in my neighborhood, it would not be a problem; more affordable shops aren't that far away seeing as I live in the middle of the city and one doesn't have to have a car.

There will surely be other problems to overcome. The one thing I don't see as a problem is the monetary cost of implementing the idea; the U.S. has more than enough money to make such a thing possible, at least on a trial basis to see what happens.

My gut tells me that if such a program were somewhat pricier than are the current aid programs, that'd be okay if it is effective at moving tens of millions of people off the "dole rolls" and into the tax base. Just toying with the numbers, and I'm doing this "quick and dirty" as I write and don't know what I'll find....let's say that of the 46.5 million folks who receive welfare, half of them enter economic integration program and "succeed" (the rest continue to receive benefits) and as a result move into at least the top 25% income bracket. (I used the~$36K/year and ~$75K/year salary marks -- the minimum salaries for the respective earnings quartiles -- and the 14.3% and 16.4% tax rates, respectively, shown at the link for those sums) That would mean at the least, we'd add between ~$103B and ~$246B to the tax base per year, more as their incomes increase over time. Based on a U.C. Berkeley study, we spend ~$153B per year on welfare programs (Medicaid, CHIP, TANF, EITC, and food stamp programs).

Looking at that "quick and dirty sniff test," the idea seems at least worth exploring. The key would be "how much more, if at all, it would cost to implement the idea of economic integration. The idea seems to have the potential to boost the fortunes of poor people -- black, white, Latino, etc. -- and do so and do so for less than the cost to keeping the very same people on the "dole rolls." Now I think the real gains come when the former welfare recipients have kids and their kids have kids. That's when we begin to have seriously huge quantities of folks who begin life on the "right foot" and remain as contributors.

So when you ask "what do we do about it?", the answer, IMO, has to be that we take a long view toward overcoming the problem. The problem will persist as long as we take the approach of "don't let them starve today" and stop there, which is basically the theme of our current approach to aid programs. Truly, for you, I and other adults like us, I don't foresee the cost of aid going down in our lives, or in the near term of them. We can establish foundations that allow that to be so for our kids and grandkids. That to me is more "worth it" than is whether "things" cost me a bit more or "a lot" (not "a lot" more) now.


Red:
I have to agree with that. I'm hard pressed to identify a good reason for delay and education (but not indoctrination) is rarely a bad thing.

"Based on and accepting the premise that removing the barriers to upward mobility allows talented and driven folks to escape the "depressed" areas from within which they developed their drive and nurtured their talent, it seems that a plausible inference from that premise (assuming it holds true) is that "underclass" folks' (no matter their ethnicity/race) being "clustered tightly," if you will, results in higher rates of violence than would otherwise occur if, rather than focusing on racial integration, we (as a nation/culture) focused our efforts on establishing economic integration. Do you agree, disagree and/or see any plausibility in that inference?"

I guess I would agree to some extent. Concentration is the term most often used for forcing unwanted persons into specific areas. There is also a natural tendency to cluster, for reasons of establishing stores and religious centers.

There are a number of processes involved here. They are all specific to the era and circumstances of each wave. The Chinese, Eastern Europeans, Western Europeans, all arrived with different levels of support and suitability to assimilate with the crazy quilt of American society. They had different standards of behavior which no doubt affected the level of violence that resulted from the mean streets each group had to contend with. West Side Story covered that one.

African people in America is a completely different subject. They are not immigrants. The moment a group of immigrants arrive in a country they start to form support groups for the next group of immigrants. Immigrants have some measure of family support. Immigrants have cultural continuity and traditions. The freed slaves had none of this. No support. No 40 acres and a mule. They were in a war torn region of the country which had gone from being the richest part of the US to the poorest in four years time. They were at 100% poverty.

Despite that, and the systematic impediments which were in place until the 1970s, 75% of Black people in America have risen above poverty. The 25% who remain are less likely to organize their own rise.

As far as the rest of what you've written goes, I think mentoring is fine and beneficial. There's not enough of it though, and it can't begin early enough to make a substantial difference. Racial and economic integration are both essential. I don't think you can achieve one without the other. The costs of poverty are undeniable, and the incentives to address the problems are pretty obvious.

As far as "red" goes, it's a theory. It makes sense to me, but it's just a theory. The main difficulty is that it takes a long time to show results. Politicians can't brag about them quickly enough, so they're not interested. The word gap is a chasm. You can state the problem easily enough, eliminate the word gap, but how? Mentoring kids when they're 11 won't make a dent in it. Living near rich people won't do it.

First, TY first for a direct and comprehensive reply to my question.

I agree with all of what you said except the bit about mentoring's inability to make a substantial difference. My own experience with my mentorees suggests something very different: it's never to late to make a sea change's worth of positive difference. I have only one measure to go by -- academic performance -- but in the past 20 years, every one of "my kids" has gone from being a D- to B- student to being, without exception, straight A students. They've picked up other things too, but that's the one that is the primary goal of my efforts as it's the one that I can maintain even when I'm out of town. (thank goodness for the WWW and telephone)

The oldest "kids" whom I mentored are now enjoying the start of great careers in engineering, medicine, and architecture, accounting and i-banking. Given the humble beginnings from which they came -- heck, their "hood" peers with whom I had little to no relationship with barely begin to understand what it is they do -- I count that as having made a significant difference.

Truly, I'm more impressed with my mentorees' growth than I am of my birth children's. Those poor kids had so much "catching up" to do in order to get where they are, but the most important thing they've gained along the way, and that nobody whom they knew before me could have given them, is firsthand knowledge of the process by which one can be successful. Having it, they will pass it on to their kids, and that means that the cycle of poverty and hopelessness, for them at least, has come to an end. That is perhaps the most significant difference.

Sidebar:

FWIW, for anyone who wants to be a mentor. There are just a few things that one needs to be/have:

• Unyielding commitment to helping one's charge(s) be successful; you have to give them almost the same priority in your life that you'd give your own kids.
• Personal experience at almost always being successful at whatever you've tried to do
• Problem solving skills; knowing how to figure out what "an answer" is even when you have no idea of what it is or where it is to be found. This more than anything else is the key skill that you will help your mentorees develop. Quite often, you'll do so by leading the kids through the process of discovering how to arrive at an answer using the materials their school has provided to them.
• A truly logical mind
• Strong communication skills; this isn't just reading or writing well, it's also knowing what and when to share information, finding ways to deliver messages/information so that it'll be received and retained
• Patience
• Creativity -- this comes into play insofar as you'll want to never let a "teachable moment" go by unused, but you'll also need to find ways to do it so that it doesn't feel like another lesson to the kids.
• Flexibility

Trust me, just like raising one's own kids, mentoring is a lot of fun. You don't have to do it with an organization, but you do have to find kids who (1) need your input and, (2) want it for no matter how much they need it, you cannot shove "how to be successful" down their throat. If they don't want it, it won't happen.​

End of Sidebar

I congratulate you for being able to make a difference in the lives of the kids you've worked with. I couldn't agree more about the ability of people to learn. That's not the hardest part. The deficiencies which disadvantage children raised in poverty are not evident at first and performances in the first couple of grades aren't too terrible. Then the problems snowball and they fall farther and farther behind. The more aware they grow, the more their failures mount. The kids in these failed schools are getting 30s-40s-50s in standardized tests for English and math. Reviving their faith in their ability to learn is the hardest part.

I'm curious about the kids you've worked with. How are they chosen to participate in this program?

 

[320 Years of History]

I'm curious about the kids you've worked with. How are they chosen to participate in this program?

TY for the complimentary remarks I deleted. Kind of you to say.

Off Topic:
As for the program, it isn't a program. I began mentoring by accident more than anything. I took the first kid when my folks' housekeeper asked me if I would mind helping her son with some of his classwork that she just couldn't make heads or tails of. I agreed and so I began tutoring specific academic subjects.

That's really all it was at the start; I was just trying to help out because I was asked to and was able to. It kind of evolved into mentoring as the boy, his mother and I developed a relationship. Then as now, there's almost nothing formal or structured about how I interact with the kids I help out. Almost because I have a few basic rules -- I call them "the terms of our deal" -- they must always follow when they are around me:

• Whenever I ask them something, other than a question of pure fact (e.g., Who was the third President? What is the exponent rule of multiplication? and other such stuff), they are never allowed to answer "I don't know." (or the equivalent of that) I don't mind that the reason why they did it or thought it may be misguided; I care that for everything they think, believe or do, they know why. I cannot show them (or tell for myself) whether they are thinking/acting on something that makes "a lot of sense," "some sense," "no sense", and so on if I don't know what made them act/think as they did.
• They cannot ever lie to me, and I never lie to them. They are allowed to tell me they don't want to answer a question I ask, but they cannot answer with a lie. I do the same in return. Yes, there have been times when they've asked questions of me that I find embarrassing to answer truthfully, but if I answer the question, I tell the truth all the same. There are occasions when I refuse to answer. The other part of this "term" is that whenever either of us refuses to answer, we have to say why and then we both agree to drop it right there and move on to something else. There's no prohibition against bringing it up at a later date. Lying is the only thing that will end "the deal."

As for what I actually do with the kids....The short is that I manage them using the exact same techniques I apply to my subordinates at work: I try to anticipate their needs, I give them what they need when or before they know they need it;, I leave them alone when they don't need my help, I praise them for what they do well and I provide constructive and specific, actionable feedback when they err, and I provide rewards mostly based on their showing a pattern of achievement rather than for specific achievements (the achievements are varied in nature and not always linked to academic performance). First and foremost, however, I make a point of calling them every couple days to see how they are doing and what they are working on. I make sure I stay in regular contact with their parents, I meet (sometimes conference calls, sometimes in person) their teachers at school and find out what they are/will be working on, etc. The kids call me when they need something.

I'm not at home every week, but when I'm in D.C., I visit them, take them and their parent(s) to dinner, a movie, museum, my home to play games and work on their assignments, my club, a sports event, or a show, or whatever, once in a blue moon I enlist them to help me with a household task or two...maybe they find it interesting, maybe they don't, all that's consistent about it is that I know that prior to my introducing whatever it is to them, they have zero exposure to it. From time to time, I invite the one or two of them who've happened to meet my own kids to join me and my family on vacations. I took two of them with me to Spain for my daughter's wedding. For a few of them I arranged for them to attend summer camps. I've taken some of them on my backpacking trips.

When they reach junior year in high school and continuing on through their first couple years in college, I introduce them to some of my professional friends so that they can find out about different career options, what skills they require, what the job/career is like in terms of lifestyle (free time, company/industry culture, compensation, etc.) and whatever else they want to know about the job(s) that person has had. Of course, I share with them the same details about my own career and past jobs. All in all, I just do what I can when I can.

After that first boy, I picked up others here and there solely by word of mouth. Generally speaking I can handle two to three kids at a time. I've "referred" a handful of kids to friends (the three people who were my friends when I was in grade school) whom I know can, want to and will do much the same things I do, albeit in their own way. We each do our mentoring independently of the other for the most part; within the past five years, we may have had two or three group socials with the kids and their parents, every couple years, we bump into one another if my friends and I are all in town at the same time to take the kids trick-or-treating for Halloween.

I know reading the above probably seems like a lot. Trust me, the actual doing of it isn't. Outside of spending time with the kids on academic things, the rest of everything we do together is just me inviting them and their parents into my life and occasionally making time to join briefly in theirs. For the most part, however, I'm doing only things I would do whether they are present or not. I don't think I could actually handle it if I were to participate in a structured mentoring program. I'm not even sure I could be successful in such a program. I have neither the aim nor the ability to help lots and lots of kids, but I do want to make a real difference for the ones I can and do help.

Hopefully that gives you a good idea of what I'm doing, how I do it, etc.

 

[Fishlore]

What is your source for the statement that "most gun crimes are committed by people with extensive criminal histories"?

We already have the highest incarceration rate on the planet and it is costing us billions. How many more people must we lock up to stop the use of guns to commit crimes?

I take it you're in favor of not putting criminals in prison. Go figure.

I do think we put too many people in prison for too long for some crimes. A large part of the prison population is serving time for non-violent drug offenses. Locking them up, along with the guys who are behind in child support, couldn't pay a fine, embezzlers etc. don't use guns, may not even own guns. Their incarceration has no effect on the process that turns legal guns into illegal guns.

You have tried to deflect the issue away from the lax gun laws that allow illegal guns to be created from legal guns effortlessly. The criminal justice system has nothing to do with gun show loopholes, fuzzy background checks, trivial dealer licensing etc. etc. I know why you don't: you can't. It's been a lot of fun anyhow...

Your entire post there is logical fallacy. You state as fact things that are NOT fact, and move on from there. There isn't even anything of enough value to respond to...none of it is true.

You say my post is a logical fallacy but trying to explain gun issues to gun fetishists isn't a logical fallacy it is a chronological fallacy, that is, a waste of time. You say I state as facts things that are not facts but you don't tell me what facts are not facts, so I take it you can't remember what they were. You say there isn't anything of enough value to respond to, then you respond with your witty and compassionate analysis of my post. I thank you from taking time away from your busy day to show us all how your mind works. It's fascinating.

You've sourced nothing, and you jump from one lie to the next, as if you've actually made a point. You haven't. The whole concept that most of the people in prison shouldn't be there is just so much garbage. The reason gun crime is such an issue in our inner cities is because we DON'T imprison people long enough. Almost all gun crime is perpetrated by KNOWN CRIMINALS. That is, people with past convictions. If they were still in jail, they wouldn't be shooting up their neighborhoods.

I love the way you debate by proclamation. You don't waste time citing boring facts and figures, you just proclaim the truth. No need to get into tedious logical analysis of facts you don't like, just announce that they are lies. Your proclamation technique saves time and energy. It lets us cut straight to the bottom line: you have no idea what you are talking about but you feel so strongly about it that you know it must be true. My aunt once had a cleaning lady like that.

I also get a kick out of your 1970's America where "crime" is committed in "ghettoes" by "minorities." Nobody has bothered to tell you that there are now more poor people living in suburbs than in cities. You haven't noticed that the mass shootings that have livened up a dull fall season aren't happening in "ghettoes" but in malls, movie theaters and suburban classrooms. Even more amusing, you don't know that "minorities" are now "majorities" in many places and will be a majority of the American population in a few more years. Your debate posture has all the startling charm of a mastodon frozen in a glacier.

 

[koshergrl]

I take it you're in favor of not putting criminals in prison. Go figure.

I do think we put too many people in prison for too long for some crimes. A large part of the prison population is serving time for non-violent drug offenses. Locking them up, along with the guys who are behind in child support, couldn't pay a fine, embezzlers etc. don't use guns, may not even own guns. Their incarceration has no effect on the process that turns legal guns into illegal guns.

You have tried to deflect the issue away from the lax gun laws that allow illegal guns to be created from legal guns effortlessly. The criminal justice system has nothing to do with gun show loopholes, fuzzy background checks, trivial dealer licensing etc. etc. I know why you don't: you can't. It's been a lot of fun anyhow...

Your entire post there is logical fallacy. You state as fact things that are NOT fact, and move on from there. There isn't even anything of enough value to respond to...none of it is true.

You say my post is a logical fallacy but trying to explain gun issues to gun fetishists isn't a logical fallacy it is a chronological fallacy, that is, a waste of time. You say I state as facts things that are not facts but you don't tell me what facts are not facts, so I take it you can't remember what they were. You say there isn't anything of enough value to respond to, then you respond with your witty and compassionate analysis of my post. I thank you from taking time away from your busy day to show us all how your mind works. It's fascinating.

You've sourced nothing, and you jump from one lie to the next, as if you've actually made a point. You haven't. The whole concept that most of the people in prison shouldn't be there is just so much garbage. The reason gun crime is such an issue in our inner cities is because we DON'T imprison people long enough. Almost all gun crime is perpetrated by KNOWN CRIMINALS. That is, people with past convictions. If they were still in jail, they wouldn't be shooting up their neighborhoods.

I love the way you debate by proclamation. You don't waste time citing boring facts and figures, you just proclaim the truth. No need to get into tedious logical analysis of facts you don't like, just announce that they are lies. Your proclamation technique saves time and energy. It lets us cut straight to the bottom line: you have no idea what you are talking about but you feel so strongly about it that you know it must be true. My aunt once had a cleaning lady like that.

I also get a kick out of your 1970's America where "crime" is committed in "ghettoes" by "minorities." Nobody has bothered to tell you that there are now more poor people living in suburbs than in cities. You haven't noticed that the mass shootings that have livened up a dull fall season aren't happening in "ghettoes" but in malls, movie theaters and suburban classrooms. Even more amusing, you don't know that "minorities" are now "majorities" in many places and will be a majority of the American population in a few more years. Your debate posture has all the startling charm of a mastodon frozen in a glacier.

In a continuing discussion, I don't feel the need to repost my sources and links over and over in the same thread. I did support my statements, using information from the cdc as well as other sources. It's dishonest, and logically fallacious, to pretend I have not. That makes you a waste of time.

 

[Elvis Obama]

I'm curious about the kids you've worked with. How are they chosen to participate in this program?

TY for the complimentary remarks I deleted. Kind of you to say.

Off Topic:
As for the program, it isn't a program. I began mentoring by accident more than anything. I took the first kid when my folks' housekeeper asked me if I would mind helping her son with some of his classwork that she just couldn't make heads or tails of. I agreed and so I began tutoring specific academic subjects.

That's really all it was at the start; I was just trying to help out because I was asked to and was able to. It kind of evolved into mentoring as the boy, his mother and I developed a relationship. Then as now, there's almost nothing formal or structured about how I interact with the kids I help out. Almost because I have a few basic rules -- I call them "the terms of our deal" -- they must always follow when they are around me:

• Whenever I ask them something, other than a question of pure fact (e.g., Who was the third President? What is the exponent rule of multiplication? and other such stuff), they are never allowed to answer "I don't know." (or the equivalent of that) I don't mind that the reason why they did it or thought it may be misguided; I care that for everything they think, believe or do, they know why. I cannot show them (or tell for myself) whether they are thinking/acting on something that makes "a lot of sense," "some sense," "no sense", and so on if I don't know what made them act/think as they did.
• They cannot ever lie to me, and I never lie to them. They are allowed to tell me they don't want to answer a question I ask, but they cannot answer with a lie. I do the same in return. Yes, there have been times when they've asked questions of me that I find embarrassing to answer truthfully, but if I answer the question, I tell the truth all the same. There are occasions when I refuse to answer. The other part of this "term" is that whenever either of us refuses to answer, we have to say why and then we both agree to drop it right there and move on to something else. There's no prohibition against bringing it up at a later date. Lying is the only thing that will end "the deal."

As for what I actually do with the kids....The short is that I manage them using the exact same techniques I apply to my subordinates at work: I try to anticipate their needs, I give them what they need when or before they know they need it;, I leave them alone when they don't need my help, I praise them for what they do well and I provide constructive and specific, actionable feedback when they err, and I provide rewards mostly based on their showing a pattern of achievement rather than for specific achievements (the achievements are varied in nature and not always linked to academic performance). First and foremost, however, I make a point of calling them every couple days to see how they are doing and what they are working on. I make sure I stay in regular contact with their parents, I meet (sometimes conference calls, sometimes in person) their teachers at school and find out what they are/will be working on, etc. The kids call me when they need something.

I'm not at home every week, but when I'm in D.C., I visit them, take them and their parent(s) to dinner, a movie, museum, my home to play games and work on their assignments, my club, a sports event, or a show, or whatever, once in a blue moon I enlist them to help me with a household task or two...maybe they find it interesting, maybe they don't, all that's consistent about it is that I know that prior to my introducing whatever it is to them, they have zero exposure to it. From time to time, I invite the one or two of them who've happened to meet my own kids to join me and my family on vacations. I took two of them with me to Spain for my daughter's wedding. For a few of them I arranged for them to attend summer camps. I've taken some of them on my backpacking trips.

When they reach junior year in high school and continuing on through their first couple years in college, I introduce them to some of my professional friends so that they can find out about different career options, what skills they require, what the job/career is like in terms of lifestyle (free time, company/industry culture, compensation, etc.) and whatever else they want to know about the job(s) that person has had. Of course, I share with them the same details about my own career and past jobs. All in all, I just do what I can when I can.

After that first boy, I picked up others here and there solely by word of mouth. Generally speaking I can handle two to three kids at a time. I've "referred" a handful of kids to friends (the three people who were my friends when I was in grade school) whom I know can, want to and will do much the same things I do, albeit in their own way. We each do our mentoring independently of the other for the most part; within the past five years, we may have had two or three group socials with the kids and their parents, every couple years, we bump into one another if my friends and I are all in town at the same time to take the kids trick-or-treating for Halloween.

I know reading the above probably seems like a lot. Trust me, the actual doing of it isn't. Outside of spending time with the kids on academic things, the rest of everything we do together is just me inviting them and their parents into my life and occasionally making time to join briefly in theirs. For the most part, however, I'm doing only things I would do whether they are present or not. I don't think I could actually handle it if I were to participate in a structured mentoring program. I'm not even sure I could be successful in such a program. I have neither the aim nor the ability to help lots and lots of kids, but I do want to make a real difference for the ones I can and do help.

Hopefully that gives you a good idea of what I'm doing, how I do it, etc.

Very interesting. You've given me a lot to think about.

I've never been to the poor neighborhoods of DC. My understanding is that they are near the top in both poverty levels and violence. All the poor neighborhoods I've worked in had a full range of humanity, from highly intelligent to dull. Their families were also of all varieties, every situation different. Public education is a disgrace in these communities. Assigning blame for this is a waste of time, but assigning blame is literally all our political system is capable of doing. And it does so very, very poorly. Teachers are scapegoated. The conditions in these schools are a symptom of poverty, and the specific character of a high poverty area must be understood in order to accomplish anything beneficial for its residents. Teachers aren't the solution, they are merely part of the solution.

So people tout other approaches, charter schools and programs like the Harlem Children's Zone. Don't fix public education, they say, abandon it. Unfortunately, in this world where education is a national concern, as well as a state concern, as well as a local school district concern, the bureaucracy gets a bit unwieldy. Fixing things becomes a mountain to climb. So charter schools step in, and alternative programs. But what do these programs do? They cherry-pick, then claim they don't. There is, in and of itself, nothing wrong with making sure that the best and the brightest in a given community have access to the resources they need. There is nothing wrong in placing resources where they are most likely to be of value. You have, once again though, the unintended consequence of leaving behind an ever more distilled poverty.

Public schools have to take everyone. They don't get to impose entry requirements or create lotteries to filter out the worst students. The Harlem Children's Zone (an entirely admirable effort, imo) subjects not just the prospective student, but their parents to a pre-admission interview process. That makes their approach incompatible with our concept of public education. Unfortunately, they say they are the answer to the woes of public education. Charter schools say they are as well.

Engagement such as this, and such as you describe in your mentoring, is obviously preferable to disengagement, which is the norm. I am uncertain as to how many students would be able to benefit from this approach. The word gap I mentioned is a developmental issue, and it does incredible harm to people, leading as it does to the ridiculous practice of "social promotion". Are these kids ready to move up a grade? Nah!, but let's do it anyway. I know of nothing crueler, except maybe the current lead levels disaster in Flint.

My experiences with engagement run the gamut. There are many who are reachable. There are many who are not. Their support ran the gamut from non-existent to excellent. Frequently overwhelmed. Frequently heartbreaking. Very frequently fractured. Since 1960 we've gone from 10% female HOH/primary bread winner to our current level of 40%. Children living with their 40 year old grandmother. It's a very deep-seated cultural malaise.

The bottom line is that mentoring can't compensate for a developmental deficiency. It shouldn't have to. It's providing remediation at the wrong end of the process. Something we do all through the educational process. Teachers reaching out to parents is a relatively rare phenomenon, even in better schools. Mentors reaching out to teachers is also a rara avis.

 

[320 Years of History]

I'm curious about the kids you've worked with. How are they chosen to participate in this program?

TY for the complimentary remarks I deleted. Kind of you to say.

Off Topic:
As for the program, it isn't a program. I began mentoring by accident more than anything. I took the first kid when my folks' housekeeper asked me if I would mind helping her son with some of his classwork that she just couldn't make heads or tails of. I agreed and so I began tutoring specific academic subjects.

That's really all it was at the start; I was just trying to help out because I was asked to and was able to. It kind of evolved into mentoring as the boy, his mother and I developed a relationship. Then as now, there's almost nothing formal or structured about how I interact with the kids I help out. Almost because I have a few basic rules -- I call them "the terms of our deal" -- they must always follow when they are around me:

• Whenever I ask them something, other than a question of pure fact (e.g., Who was the third President? What is the exponent rule of multiplication? and other such stuff), they are never allowed to answer "I don't know." (or the equivalent of that) I don't mind that the reason why they did it or thought it may be misguided; I care that for everything they think, believe or do, they know why. I cannot show them (or tell for myself) whether they are thinking/acting on something that makes "a lot of sense," "some sense," "no sense", and so on if I don't know what made them act/think as they did.
• They cannot ever lie to me, and I never lie to them. They are allowed to tell me they don't want to answer a question I ask, but they cannot answer with a lie. I do the same in return. Yes, there have been times when they've asked questions of me that I find embarrassing to answer truthfully, but if I answer the question, I tell the truth all the same. There are occasions when I refuse to answer. The other part of this "term" is that whenever either of us refuses to answer, we have to say why and then we both agree to drop it right there and move on to something else. There's no prohibition against bringing it up at a later date. Lying is the only thing that will end "the deal."

As for what I actually do with the kids....The short is that I manage them using the exact same techniques I apply to my subordinates at work: I try to anticipate their needs, I give them what they need when or before they know they need it;, I leave them alone when they don't need my help, I praise them for what they do well and I provide constructive and specific, actionable feedback when they err, and I provide rewards mostly based on their showing a pattern of achievement rather than for specific achievements (the achievements are varied in nature and not always linked to academic performance). First and foremost, however, I make a point of calling them every couple days to see how they are doing and what they are working on. I make sure I stay in regular contact with their parents, I meet (sometimes conference calls, sometimes in person) their teachers at school and find out what they are/will be working on, etc. The kids call me when they need something.

I'm not at home every week, but when I'm in D.C., I visit them, take them and their parent(s) to dinner, a movie, museum, my home to play games and work on their assignments, my club, a sports event, or a show, or whatever, once in a blue moon I enlist them to help me with a household task or two...maybe they find it interesting, maybe they don't, all that's consistent about it is that I know that prior to my introducing whatever it is to them, they have zero exposure to it. From time to time, I invite the one or two of them who've happened to meet my own kids to join me and my family on vacations. I took two of them with me to Spain for my daughter's wedding. For a few of them I arranged for them to attend summer camps. I've taken some of them on my backpacking trips.

When they reach junior year in high school and continuing on through their first couple years in college, I introduce them to some of my professional friends so that they can find out about different career options, what skills they require, what the job/career is like in terms of lifestyle (free time, company/industry culture, compensation, etc.) and whatever else they want to know about the job(s) that person has had. Of course, I share with them the same details about my own career and past jobs. All in all, I just do what I can when I can.

After that first boy, I picked up others here and there solely by word of mouth. Generally speaking I can handle two to three kids at a time. I've "referred" a handful of kids to friends (the three people who were my friends when I was in grade school) whom I know can, want to and will do much the same things I do, albeit in their own way. We each do our mentoring independently of the other for the most part; within the past five years, we may have had two or three group socials with the kids and their parents, every couple years, we bump into one another if my friends and I are all in town at the same time to take the kids trick-or-treating for Halloween.

I know reading the above probably seems like a lot. Trust me, the actual doing of it isn't. Outside of spending time with the kids on academic things, the rest of everything we do together is just me inviting them and their parents into my life and occasionally making time to join briefly in theirs. For the most part, however, I'm doing only things I would do whether they are present or not. I don't think I could actually handle it if I were to participate in a structured mentoring program. I'm not even sure I could be successful in such a program. I have neither the aim nor the ability to help lots and lots of kids, but I do want to make a real difference for the ones I can and do help.

Hopefully that gives you a good idea of what I'm doing, how I do it, etc.

Very interesting. You've given me a lot to think about.

I've never been to the poor neighborhoods of DC. My understanding is that they are near the top in both poverty levels and violence. All the poor neighborhoods I've worked in had a full range of humanity, from highly intelligent to dull. Their families were also of all varieties, every situation different. Public education is a disgrace in these communities. Assigning blame for this is a waste of time, but assigning blame is literally all our political system is capable of doing. And it does so very, very poorly. Teachers are scapegoated. The conditions in these schools are a symptom of poverty, and the specific character of a high poverty area must be understood in order to accomplish anything beneficial for its residents. Teachers aren't the solution, they are merely part of the solution.

So people tout other approaches, charter schools and programs like the Harlem Children's Zone. Don't fix public education, they say, abandon it. Unfortunately, in this world where education is a national concern, as well as a state concern, as well as a local school district concern, the bureaucracy gets a bit unwieldy. Fixing things becomes a mountain to climb. So charter schools step in, and alternative programs. But what do these programs do? They cherry-pick, then claim they don't. There is, in and of itself, nothing wrong with making sure that the best and the brightest in a given community have access to the resources they need. There is nothing wrong in placing resources where they are most likely to be of value. You have, once again though, the unintended consequence of leaving behind an ever more distilled poverty.

Public schools have to take everyone. They don't get to impose entry requirements or create lotteries to filter out the worst students. The Harlem Children's Zone (an entirely admirable effort, imo) subjects not just the prospective student, but their parents to a pre-admission interview process. That makes their approach incompatible with our concept of public education. Unfortunately, they say they are the answer to the woes of public education. Charter schools say they are as well.

Engagement such as this, and such as you describe in your mentoring, is obviously preferable to disengagement, which is the norm. I am uncertain as to how many students would be able to benefit from this approach. The word gap I mentioned is a developmental issue, and it does incredible harm to people, leading as it does to the ridiculous practice of "social promotion". Are these kids ready to move up a grade? Nah!, but let's do it anyway. I know of nothing crueler, except maybe the current lead levels disaster in Flint.

My experiences with engagement run the gamut. There are many who are reachable. There are many who are not. Their support ran the gamut from non-existent to excellent. Frequently overwhelmed. Frequently heartbreaking. Very frequently fractured. Since 1960 we've gone from 10% female HOH/primary bread winner to our current level of 40%. Children living with their 40 year old grandmother. It's a very deep-seated cultural malaise.

The bottom line is that mentoring can't compensate for a developmental deficiency. It shouldn't have to. It's providing remediation at the wrong end of the process. Something we do all through the educational process. Teachers reaching out to parents is a relatively rare phenomenon, even in better schools. Mentors reaching out to teachers is also a rara avis.

Interpreting a saying from the woman who wants to be President, I'm just trying to do my part as a member of "the village." Although I specifically think of myself as mentoring the kids and showing them how to be successful, believe me, part of what happens in the process is that their parent's discover how to be successful parents. I think only a couple of the parents actively realized that is also part of the transformation that happened as I worked with their kids, but over time, all of them began doing the things they saw me doing.

I don't tell the parents that I'm going to show them how to be effective parents. I just insist that they be present, especially at key times like when I meet with their kid's teachers, or get them into the room on the occasions when we're working through something for which I didn't walk in the door knowing the answer, so to speak. That lets them see that even though they don't have the "book learning" I do, that they also don't need to in order to provide the right guidance to their kid.

To a person, the parents are just like their kids -- low performers, lack of confidence, etc. -- and as such, that they didn't learn how to be effective parents, yet there they are with kids. Countless have been the times when the theme of a discussion has been "though we/I don't know precisely what to do, we/I know what not to do because we/I did 'this or that' and it did not work, so we need to try something that is different." It can be a little different, it can be a lot different, but it must be different somehow from whatever one tried that didn't work.

What is it "they" say? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. You'd be amazed at how many people do not take that to heart in any way, shape or form.

 

[Fishlore]

I do think we put too many people in prison for too long for some crimes. A large part of the prison population is serving time for non-violent drug offenses. Locking them up, along with the guys who are behind in child support, couldn't pay a fine, embezzlers etc. don't use guns, may not even own guns. Their incarceration has no effect on the process that turns legal guns into illegal guns.

You have tried to deflect the issue away from the lax gun laws that allow illegal guns to be created from legal guns effortlessly. The criminal justice system has nothing to do with gun show loopholes, fuzzy background checks, trivial dealer licensing etc. etc. I know why you don't: you can't. It's been a lot of fun anyhow...

Your entire post there is logical fallacy. You state as fact things that are NOT fact, and move on from there. There isn't even anything of enough value to respond to...none of it is true.

You say my post is a logical fallacy but trying to explain gun issues to gun fetishists isn't a logical fallacy it is a chronological fallacy, that is, a waste of time. You say I state as facts things that are not facts but you don't tell me what facts are not facts, so I take it you can't remember what they were. You say there isn't anything of enough value to respond to, then you respond with your witty and compassionate analysis of my post. I thank you from taking time away from your busy day to show us all how your mind works. It's fascinating.

You've sourced nothing, and you jump from one lie to the next, as if you've actually made a point. You haven't. The whole concept that most of the people in prison shouldn't be there is just so much garbage. The reason gun crime is such an issue in our inner cities is because we DON'T imprison people long enough. Almost all gun crime is perpetrated by KNOWN CRIMINALS. That is, people with past convictions. If they were still in jail, they wouldn't be shooting up their neighborhoods.

I love the way you debate by proclamation. You don't waste time citing boring facts and figures, you just proclaim the truth. No need to get into tedious logical analysis of facts you don't like, just announce that they are lies. Your proclamation technique saves time and energy. It lets us cut straight to the bottom line: you have no idea what you are talking about but you feel so strongly about it that you know it must be true. My aunt once had a cleaning lady like that.

I also get a kick out of your 1970's America where "crime" is committed in "ghettoes" by "minorities." Nobody has bothered to tell you that there are now more poor people living in suburbs than in cities. You haven't noticed that the mass shootings that have livened up a dull fall season aren't happening in "ghettoes" but in malls, movie theaters and suburban classrooms. Even more amusing, you don't know that "minorities" are now "majorities" in many places and will be a majority of the American population in a few more years. Your debate posture has all the startling charm of a mastodon frozen in a glacier.

In a continuing discussion, I don't feel the need to repost my sources and links over and over in the same thread. I did support my statements, using information from the cdc as well as other sources. It's dishonest, and logically fallacious, to pretend I have not. That makes you a waste of time.

I have no recollection of your previous citations. How much work would it have been to list the post number? This is #55, If you find me to be a waste of time, you have no need to respond. I understand.

 

[320 Years of History]

...debate by proclamation. ...

I love that phrase. I am going to use that one, a lot I suspect. TY

 

[Elvis Obama]

I'm curious about the kids you've worked with. How are they chosen to participate in this program?

TY for the complimentary remarks I deleted. Kind of you to say.

Off Topic:
As for the program, it isn't a program. I began mentoring by accident more than anything. I took the first kid when my folks' housekeeper asked me if I would mind helping her son with some of his classwork that she just couldn't make heads or tails of. I agreed and so I began tutoring specific academic subjects.

That's really all it was at the start; I was just trying to help out because I was asked to and was able to. It kind of evolved into mentoring as the boy, his mother and I developed a relationship. Then as now, there's almost nothing formal or structured about how I interact with the kids I help out. Almost because I have a few basic rules -- I call them "the terms of our deal" -- they must always follow when they are around me:

• Whenever I ask them something, other than a question of pure fact (e.g., Who was the third President? What is the exponent rule of multiplication? and other such stuff), they are never allowed to answer "I don't know." (or the equivalent of that) I don't mind that the reason why they did it or thought it may be misguided; I care that for everything they think, believe or do, they know why. I cannot show them (or tell for myself) whether they are thinking/acting on something that makes "a lot of sense," "some sense," "no sense", and so on if I don't know what made them act/think as they did.
• They cannot ever lie to me, and I never lie to them. They are allowed to tell me they don't want to answer a question I ask, but they cannot answer with a lie. I do the same in return. Yes, there have been times when they've asked questions of me that I find embarrassing to answer truthfully, but if I answer the question, I tell the truth all the same. There are occasions when I refuse to answer. The other part of this "term" is that whenever either of us refuses to answer, we have to say why and then we both agree to drop it right there and move on to something else. There's no prohibition against bringing it up at a later date. Lying is the only thing that will end "the deal."

As for what I actually do with the kids....The short is that I manage them using the exact same techniques I apply to my subordinates at work: I try to anticipate their needs, I give them what they need when or before they know they need it;, I leave them alone when they don't need my help, I praise them for what they do well and I provide constructive and specific, actionable feedback when they err, and I provide rewards mostly based on their showing a pattern of achievement rather than for specific achievements (the achievements are varied in nature and not always linked to academic performance). First and foremost, however, I make a point of calling them every couple days to see how they are doing and what they are working on. I make sure I stay in regular contact with their parents, I meet (sometimes conference calls, sometimes in person) their teachers at school and find out what they are/will be working on, etc. The kids call me when they need something.

I'm not at home every week, but when I'm in D.C., I visit them, take them and their parent(s) to dinner, a movie, museum, my home to play games and work on their assignments, my club, a sports event, or a show, or whatever, once in a blue moon I enlist them to help me with a household task or two...maybe they find it interesting, maybe they don't, all that's consistent about it is that I know that prior to my introducing whatever it is to them, they have zero exposure to it. From time to time, I invite the one or two of them who've happened to meet my own kids to join me and my family on vacations. I took two of them with me to Spain for my daughter's wedding. For a few of them I arranged for them to attend summer camps. I've taken some of them on my backpacking trips.

When they reach junior year in high school and continuing on through their first couple years in college, I introduce them to some of my professional friends so that they can find out about different career options, what skills they require, what the job/career is like in terms of lifestyle (free time, company/industry culture, compensation, etc.) and whatever else they want to know about the job(s) that person has had. Of course, I share with them the same details about my own career and past jobs. All in all, I just do what I can when I can.

After that first boy, I picked up others here and there solely by word of mouth. Generally speaking I can handle two to three kids at a time. I've "referred" a handful of kids to friends (the three people who were my friends when I was in grade school) whom I know can, want to and will do much the same things I do, albeit in their own way. We each do our mentoring independently of the other for the most part; within the past five years, we may have had two or three group socials with the kids and their parents, every couple years, we bump into one another if my friends and I are all in town at the same time to take the kids trick-or-treating for Halloween.

I know reading the above probably seems like a lot. Trust me, the actual doing of it isn't. Outside of spending time with the kids on academic things, the rest of everything we do together is just me inviting them and their parents into my life and occasionally making time to join briefly in theirs. For the most part, however, I'm doing only things I would do whether they are present or not. I don't think I could actually handle it if I were to participate in a structured mentoring program. I'm not even sure I could be successful in such a program. I have neither the aim nor the ability to help lots and lots of kids, but I do want to make a real difference for the ones I can and do help.

Hopefully that gives you a good idea of what I'm doing, how I do it, etc.

Very interesting. You've given me a lot to think about.

I've never been to the poor neighborhoods of DC. My understanding is that they are near the top in both poverty levels and violence. All the poor neighborhoods I've worked in had a full range of humanity, from highly intelligent to dull. Their families were also of all varieties, every situation different. Public education is a disgrace in these communities. Assigning blame for this is a waste of time, but assigning blame is literally all our political system is capable of doing. And it does so very, very poorly. Teachers are scapegoated. The conditions in these schools are a symptom of poverty, and the specific character of a high poverty area must be understood in order to accomplish anything beneficial for its residents. Teachers aren't the solution, they are merely part of the solution.

So people tout other approaches, charter schools and programs like the Harlem Children's Zone. Don't fix public education, they say, abandon it. Unfortunately, in this world where education is a national concern, as well as a state concern, as well as a local school district concern, the bureaucracy gets a bit unwieldy. Fixing things becomes a mountain to climb. So charter schools step in, and alternative programs. But what do these programs do? They cherry-pick, then claim they don't. There is, in and of itself, nothing wrong with making sure that the best and the brightest in a given community have access to the resources they need. There is nothing wrong in placing resources where they are most likely to be of value. You have, once again though, the unintended consequence of leaving behind an ever more distilled poverty.

Public schools have to take everyone. They don't get to impose entry requirements or create lotteries to filter out the worst students. The Harlem Children's Zone (an entirely admirable effort, imo) subjects not just the prospective student, but their parents to a pre-admission interview process. That makes their approach incompatible with our concept of public education. Unfortunately, they say they are the answer to the woes of public education. Charter schools say they are as well.

Engagement such as this, and such as you describe in your mentoring, is obviously preferable to disengagement, which is the norm. I am uncertain as to how many students would be able to benefit from this approach. The word gap I mentioned is a developmental issue, and it does incredible harm to people, leading as it does to the ridiculous practice of "social promotion". Are these kids ready to move up a grade? Nah!, but let's do it anyway. I know of nothing crueler, except maybe the current lead levels disaster in Flint.

My experiences with engagement run the gamut. There are many who are reachable. There are many who are not. Their support ran the gamut from non-existent to excellent. Frequently overwhelmed. Frequently heartbreaking. Very frequently fractured. Since 1960 we've gone from 10% female HOH/primary bread winner to our current level of 40%. Children living with their 40 year old grandmother. It's a very deep-seated cultural malaise.

The bottom line is that mentoring can't compensate for a developmental deficiency. It shouldn't have to. It's providing remediation at the wrong end of the process. Something we do all through the educational process. Teachers reaching out to parents is a relatively rare phenomenon, even in better schools. Mentors reaching out to teachers is also a rara avis.

Interpreting a saying from the woman who wants to be President, I'm just trying to do my part as a member of "the village." Although I specifically think of myself as mentoring the kids and showing them how to be successful, believe me, part of what happens in the process is that their parent's discover how to be successful parents. I think only a couple of the parents actively realized that is also part of the transformation that happened as I worked with their kids, but over time, all of them began doing the things they saw me doing.

I don't tell the parents that I'm going to show them how to be effective parents. I just insist that they be present, especially at key times like when I meet with their kid's teachers, or get them into the room on the occasions when we're working through something for which I didn't walk in the door knowing the answer, so to speak. That lets them see that even though they don't have the "book learning" I do, that they also don't need to in order to provide the right guidance to their kid.

To a person, the parents are just like their kids -- low performers, lack of confidence, etc. -- and as such, that they didn't learn how to be effective parents, yet there they are with kids. Countless have been the times when the theme of a discussion has been "though we/I don't know precisely what to do, we/I know what not to do because we/I did 'this or that' and it did not work, so we need to try something that is different." It can be a little different, it can be a lot different, but it must be different somehow from whatever one tried that didn't work.

What is it "they" say? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. You'd be amazed at how many people do not take that to heart in any way, shape or form.

I couldn't agree more that the parents of children born to poverty didn't learn to be effective parents, but that's the real challenge. First of all, they're often children themselves. Secondly, the poor black people in the US are the product of a cultural genocide. Third, and most important, they're often missing, either run off, or mentally ill, or drug addicted, or working three jobs to make ends meet. Poverty is a very destructive force.

I wonder how the children I worked with would have responded to having a mentor in their lives? I can't see how it could have been anything other than a positive influence, though the negative influences you have to counterbalance are pretty powerful. It takes the right temperament to work with kids in need of mentoring. Here's the rub(s):

1- There will never be enough mentors to make a difference. If you have a practical plan for increasing the ranks of such folks to match the need, I would love to hear it.

2- Getting to the people in need of mentoring. You've got to have a huge investment from more than just the mentors. You can't have them wandering around poor neighborhoods crying "mentor for sale!". You have to have a system to match child to mentor, and that's expensive.

3- Something like this has been tried. NYC tried to get retired executives to go into teaching and help turn around the failing schools of the NY Board of Ed. It, uh, didn't work.

I think this is part of the answer, as all such efforts are. A multi-faceted approach is the only real answer. And patience. If I were going to triage all the problems and assign priorities to projects meant to deal with them, I would be inclined to support those that addressed the needs of these children as early in their lives as possible.

 

[320 Years of History]

I couldn't agree more that the parents of children born to poverty didn't learn to be effective parents, but that's the real challenge. First of all, they're often children themselves. Secondly, the poor black people in the US are the product of a cultural genocide. Third, and most important, they're often missing, either run off, or mentally ill, or drug addicted, or working three jobs to make ends meet. Poverty is a very destructive force.

I wonder how the children I worked with would have responded to having a mentor in their lives? I can't see how it could have been anything other than a positive influence, though the negative influences you have to counterbalance are pretty powerful. It takes the right temperament to work with kids in need of mentoring. Here's the rub(s):

1- There will never be enough mentors to make a difference. If you have a practical plan for increasing the ranks of such folks to match the need, I would love to hear it.

2- Getting to the people in need of mentoring. You've got to have a huge investment from more than just the mentors. You can't have them wandering around poor neighborhoods crying "mentor for sale!". You have to have a system to match child to mentor, and that's expensive.

3- Something like this has been tried. NYC tried to get retired executives to go into teaching and help turn around the failing schools of the NY Board of Ed. It, uh, didn't work.

I think this is part of the answer, as all such efforts are. A multi-faceted approach is the only real answer. And patience. If I were going to triage all the problems and assign priorities to projects meant to deal with them, I would be inclined to support those that addressed the needs of these children as early in their lives as possible.

Red:
I don't believe that poverty and not knowing how to parent effectively have a causal relationship. One's poverty is not the reason one is an ineffective parent. People are ineffective parents, IMO, because, for example:

• Their hubris leads them to accept that their approach, the one inspired by their own parents, to the matter is the right approach. I suffer somewhat from that too, and truly, the way I go/went about parenting is the only way I know how and I didn't really seek alternative ways of doing it. The only difference is that my parents' and my approach hasn't shown itself not to work. I'm sure there are circumstances where it might not; I just haven't come by them. Let's face it, pretty much everyone has a "one size fits all" view on what approach to child development, parenting, works.
• They have not serendipitously encountered any other approach to parenting than the one(s) applied in their own formative years.
• By seeing their own way of doing it as "good enough," they unwittingly allow "good" to be the enemy of "better" or "best."

Obviously, those three things are just some examples of what I think are the key causes, still, I don't believe poverty is a cause.

I believe that to accept poverty as a cause is to tacitly assert that success is a quantifiable thing in the way our culture likes to make it seem. For example, I believe that even though amassing a tidy sum of wealth is one measure of success, it isn't the only one. Teachers don't generally get rich teaching, but they can be highly successful all the same. Being successful, effective means one (1) identifies a goal and (2) achieves it. Making a lot of money is hardly the only or even most important goal one might set.

One might be among the best teachers in the world, yet one is very unlikely to be as financially successful as even a mediocre investment banker, yet one will, as that highly effective teacher, earn enough compensation to afford a comfortable lifestyle. Wealth cannot be the end that one aims for, but it can be a good motivator to spur one to achieve an end.

Show me someone for whom wealth is the end itself and I'll show you someone who's both selfish and shallow, someone who defies the very idea of what it means to be a social animal, someone who quite literally rejects their own human nature. I doubt that many (any?) folks do so consciously, but deliberate or not, the outcome -- the sorts of breakdowns we observe in our society come about and persist -- is the same.

Purple:
I think you may have an aim to institutionalize something that probably doesn't work all that well when it's so structured. As I suggested earlier, I think mentoring of the sort I do issues from my "village mentality." It's the sort of thing whereby I see a gap that needs filling, I know that I can, in part at least help fill that gap, so I take up the mantle and fill it as best I can. I commit to helping the kids I help and showing them things I think will help them be successful. I don't promise them that they will be successful because it's a promise I can't keep. I give them "tools," but I can't make them use the "tools," or even use them in the right way, at the right time, and/or in the right place.

Pink:
I'm not surprised it didn't work. I don't think I could "turn around" failing schools. I can "turn around" a failing individual.

The reason I don't think I could "turn around" failing schools is that I can do things as an individual that schools, as institutions cannot. Schools necessarily operate on a model that assumes that a single approach to teaching and developing the hundreds or thousands of kids in the building/system will be effective for all of them. What I do, in part, is work with kids for whom that model hasn't been successful and find ways to show them how to make the model the schools apply be successful for them.

Remember, the academic achievement is the only thing I can measure at this point in my mentorees' lives. I won't really know the real nature and scope of how successful I've been until "my kids" are grown and living as contributing members of society who, like me, "find gaps and fill them." I can wait to see if that happens for all, most, some, any of "my kids." School systems, institutions, however, cannot.

Our society demands of them that they show measurable and nearer term results, and that they do so with a predefined and rigid approach. I have no such expectations to meet; I need only do the best I can and hope it works. (Plus, even as I'm "doing my thing," the schools are still out there doing whatever it is they do.) The extent to which it works is fine because I don't have to meet any specific target with regard to the kids' performance, and whatever improvement my efforts effect is still improvement. With the type of mentoring I do, I may or may not "win," but neither I nor "my kids" can lose.

 

[Elvis Obama]

I couldn't agree more that the parents of children born to poverty didn't learn to be effective parents, but that's the real challenge. First of all, they're often children themselves. Secondly, the poor black people in the US are the product of a cultural genocide. Third, and most important, they're often missing, either run off, or mentally ill, or drug addicted, or working three jobs to make ends meet. Poverty is a very destructive force.

I wonder how the children I worked with would have responded to having a mentor in their lives? I can't see how it could have been anything other than a positive influence, though the negative influences you have to counterbalance are pretty powerful. It takes the right temperament to work with kids in need of mentoring. Here's the rub(s):

1- There will never be enough mentors to make a difference. If you have a practical plan for increasing the ranks of such folks to match the need, I would love to hear it.

2- Getting to the people in need of mentoring. You've got to have a huge investment from more than just the mentors. You can't have them wandering around poor neighborhoods crying "mentor for sale!". You have to have a system to match child to mentor, and that's expensive.

3- Something like this has been tried. NYC tried to get retired executives to go into teaching and help turn around the failing schools of the NY Board of Ed. It, uh, didn't work.

I think this is part of the answer, as all such efforts are. A multi-faceted approach is the only real answer. And patience. If I were going to triage all the problems and assign priorities to projects meant to deal with them, I would be inclined to support those that addressed the needs of these children as early in their lives as possible.

Red:
I don't believe that poverty and not knowing how to parent effectively have a causal relationship. One's poverty is not the reason one is an ineffective parent. People are ineffective parents, IMO, because, for example:

• Their hubris leads them to accept that their approach, the one inspired by their own parents, to the matter is the right approach. I suffer somewhat from that too, and truly, the way I go/went about parenting is the only way I know how and I didn't really seek alternative ways of doing it. The only difference is that my parents' and my approach hasn't shown itself not to work. I'm sure there are circumstances where it might not; I just haven't come by them. Let's face it, pretty much everyone has a "one size fits all" view on what approach to child development, parenting, works.
• They have not serendipitously encountered any other approach to parenting than the one(s) applied in their own formative years.
• By seeing their own way of doing it as "good enough," they unwittingly allow "good" to be the enemy of "better" or "best."

Obviously, those three things are just some examples of what I think are the key causes, still, I don't believe poverty is a cause.

I believe that to accept poverty as a cause is to tacitly assert that success is a quantifiable thing in the way our culture likes to make it seem. For example, I believe that even though amassing a tidy sum of wealth is one measure of success, it isn't the only one. Teachers don't generally get rich teaching, but they can be highly successful all the same. Being successful, effective means one (1) identifies a goal and (2) achieves it. Making a lot of money is hardly the only or even most important goal one might set.

One might be among the best teachers in the world, yet one is very unlikely to be as financially successful as even a mediocre investment banker, yet one will, as that highly effective teacher, earn enough compensation to afford a comfortable lifestyle. Wealth cannot be the end that one aims for, but it can be a good motivator to spur one to achieve an end.

Show me someone for whom wealth is the end itself and I'll show you someone who's both selfish and shallow, someone who defies the very idea of what it means to be a social animal, someone who quite literally rejects their own human nature. I doubt that many (any?) folks do so consciously, but deliberate or not, the outcome -- the sorts of breakdowns we observe in our society come about and persist -- is the same.

Purple:
I think you may have an aim to institutionalize something that probably doesn't work all that well when it's so structured. As I suggested earlier, I think mentoring of the sort I do issues from my "village mentality." It's the sort of thing whereby I see a gap that needs filling, I know that I can, in part at least help fill that gap, so I take up the mantle and fill it as best I can. I commit to helping the kids I help and showing them things I think will help them be successful. I don't promise them that they will be successful because it's a promise I can't keep. I give them "tools," but I can't make them use the "tools," or even use them in the right way, at the right time, and/or in the right place.

Pink:
I'm not surprised it didn't work. I don't think I could "turn around" failing schools. I can "turn around" a failing individual.

The reason I don't think I could "turn around" failing schools is that I can do things as an individual that schools, as institutions cannot. Schools necessarily operate on a model that assumes that a single approach to teaching and developing the hundreds or thousands of kids in the building/system will be effective for all of them. What I do, in part, is work with kids for whom that model hasn't been successful and find ways to show them how to make the model the schools apply be successful for them.

Remember, the academic achievement is the only thing I can measure at this point in my mentorees' lives. I won't really know the real nature and scope of how successful I've been until "my kids" are grown and living as contributing members of society who, like me, "find gaps and fill them." I can wait to see if that happens for all, most, some, any of "my kids." School systems, institutions, however, cannot.

Our society demands of them that they show measurable and nearer term results, and that they do so with a predefined and rigid approach. I have no such expectations to meet; I need only do the best I can and hope it works. (Plus, even as I'm "doing my thing," the schools are still out there doing whatever it is they do.) The extent to which it works is fine because I don't have to meet any specific target with regard to the kids' performance, and whatever improvement my efforts effect is still improvement. With the type of mentoring I do, I may or may not "win," but neither I nor "my kids" can lose.

As I've said, I think mentoring is great and we need more of it. Unfortunately I don't think we're going to get it. NYC executives didn't fail to turn around failing schools, they failed to try. The ads were ineffective. Expecting retired people who had achieved a lifestyle they enjoyed to abandon it for the enormous effort required to try to teach in a failed school is reflective of an overestimation of human nature. We're not that good. The golf course or an inner city hellhole school? Hmmmn. Fore!

I don't want to appear cynical, but... I am. They're out there, in the millions, those kids who need and would benefit from outreach. Again, when assigning scarce resources to the problem, practicality is a major consideration. First you'd have to prove that a sufficient number of people would be willing to do what a mentor would need to do in order to be effective. Going into "bad" neighborhoods? A deal breaker for most. Taking on the problems of troubled youths?

If you can prove there's enough people willing to commit to a process from which they cannot casually withdraw, then you face the mountain of institutionalizing the process. The rules you now create for yourself will have to be subject to the rules of the new institution, and as you say, thereby have their effectiveness blunted. I am not qualified to do a cost/benefit analysis of all this, but I would be skeptical of its practicality.

I have not suggested that money is an effective measure of success or happiness. We seem to have a very different perspective on poverty. That's too large a subject, however. You have to particularize. What I'm talking about is Black poverty in America.

Parenting is the most important of human activities. It's many things, but one of them is birthright. This consists of both family and cultural ties. It is the anchor for parenting. It's the village of which you speak. It is literally priceless. What happens when you rob people of their birthright? When you deny them cultural continuity of any kind, while at the same time denying them any opportunity to learn your culture and assimilate? When you make it a crime to teach them to read and write? When you suppress and concentrate them at every turn? When you deny them the right to form families? When you sell their children?

We didn't "free" the slaves, we brutally put down a rebellion. We broke the last major slave network on the earth. Millions of former slaves were now free to fend for themselves in the disaster zone of the defeated South. Free of pesky skills, money, culture, education. Yes, it would have been serendipitous indeed if the freed slaves could have encountered people who would teach them about culture and traditions and parenting. It happened to Louis Armstrong, for one. Father, absent. Mother, prostitute. He knew abuse and crushing poverty. He was taken in by a family who mentored him. The results speak for themselves. So do the results of the vast majority who don't enjoy this great good fortune. They cannot pass along parenting skills they themselves do not possess. Such skills are not instinctive, they are the cultural and family birthright. There is no way to overstate the importance of this birthright, or the damage caused by destroying it. I called it cultural genocide and that is exactly what I think it is. The effects of such an occurrence do not disappear quickly. Frankly, they have disappeared faster than I would ever have expected them to, with 75% of the black population above the poverty line. With a black president.

But the 25% are a problem. A big problem. A problem that I'm not sure you have seen in its entirety. I'm curious about your reaction to my statement about nothing being the same in these high poverty areas. You mentioned the schools doing "whatever it is they do". The failed school is a perfect example of just how different, how inverted things become when they are attempted in a high poverty area. It's Dickensian. Literally. An institution designed to educate turned into a tool of suppression. There are no expectations. There is only a meat grinder of failure for fragile young psyches. I call them "penitentiaries lite". They're places we lock up young people, so they're not out roaming the streets.

The word gap is the measure of what a child has been exposed to. Poverty traps children in limited environments. The earlier you can expand their worlds, the better.

 

[320 Years of History]

I couldn't agree more that the parents of children born to poverty didn't learn to be effective parents, but that's the real challenge. First of all, they're often children themselves. Secondly, the poor black people in the US are the product of a cultural genocide. Third, and most important, they're often missing, either run off, or mentally ill, or drug addicted, or working three jobs to make ends meet. Poverty is a very destructive force.

I wonder how the children I worked with would have responded to having a mentor in their lives? I can't see how it could have been anything other than a positive influence, though the negative influences you have to counterbalance are pretty powerful. It takes the right temperament to work with kids in need of mentoring. Here's the rub(s):

1- There will never be enough mentors to make a difference. If you have a practical plan for increasing the ranks of such folks to match the need, I would love to hear it.

2- Getting to the people in need of mentoring. You've got to have a huge investment from more than just the mentors. You can't have them wandering around poor neighborhoods crying "mentor for sale!". You have to have a system to match child to mentor, and that's expensive.

3- Something like this has been tried. NYC tried to get retired executives to go into teaching and help turn around the failing schools of the NY Board of Ed. It, uh, didn't work.

I think this is part of the answer, as all such efforts are. A multi-faceted approach is the only real answer. And patience. If I were going to triage all the problems and assign priorities to projects meant to deal with them, I would be inclined to support those that addressed the needs of these children as early in their lives as possible.

Red:
I don't believe that poverty and not knowing how to parent effectively have a causal relationship. One's poverty is not the reason one is an ineffective parent. People are ineffective parents, IMO, because, for example:

• Their hubris leads them to accept that their approach, the one inspired by their own parents, to the matter is the right approach. I suffer somewhat from that too, and truly, the way I go/went about parenting is the only way I know how and I didn't really seek alternative ways of doing it. The only difference is that my parents' and my approach hasn't shown itself not to work. I'm sure there are circumstances where it might not; I just haven't come by them. Let's face it, pretty much everyone has a "one size fits all" view on what approach to child development, parenting, works.
• They have not serendipitously encountered any other approach to parenting than the one(s) applied in their own formative years.
• By seeing their own way of doing it as "good enough," they unwittingly allow "good" to be the enemy of "better" or "best."

Obviously, those three things are just some examples of what I think are the key causes, still, I don't believe poverty is a cause.

I believe that to accept poverty as a cause is to tacitly assert that success is a quantifiable thing in the way our culture likes to make it seem. For example, I believe that even though amassing a tidy sum of wealth is one measure of success, it isn't the only one. Teachers don't generally get rich teaching, but they can be highly successful all the same. Being successful, effective means one (1) identifies a goal and (2) achieves it. Making a lot of money is hardly the only or even most important goal one might set.

One might be among the best teachers in the world, yet one is very unlikely to be as financially successful as even a mediocre investment banker, yet one will, as that highly effective teacher, earn enough compensation to afford a comfortable lifestyle. Wealth cannot be the end that one aims for, but it can be a good motivator to spur one to achieve an end.

Show me someone for whom wealth is the end itself and I'll show you someone who's both selfish and shallow, someone who defies the very idea of what it means to be a social animal, someone who quite literally rejects their own human nature. I doubt that many (any?) folks do so consciously, but deliberate or not, the outcome -- the sorts of breakdowns we observe in our society come about and persist -- is the same.

Purple:
I think you may have an aim to institutionalize something that probably doesn't work all that well when it's so structured. As I suggested earlier, I think mentoring of the sort I do issues from my "village mentality." It's the sort of thing whereby I see a gap that needs filling, I know that I can, in part at least help fill that gap, so I take up the mantle and fill it as best I can. I commit to helping the kids I help and showing them things I think will help them be successful. I don't promise them that they will be successful because it's a promise I can't keep. I give them "tools," but I can't make them use the "tools," or even use them in the right way, at the right time, and/or in the right place.

Pink:
I'm not surprised it didn't work. I don't think I could "turn around" failing schools. I can "turn around" a failing individual.

The reason I don't think I could "turn around" failing schools is that I can do things as an individual that schools, as institutions cannot. Schools necessarily operate on a model that assumes that a single approach to teaching and developing the hundreds or thousands of kids in the building/system will be effective for all of them. What I do, in part, is work with kids for whom that model hasn't been successful and find ways to show them how to make the model the schools apply be successful for them.

Remember, the academic achievement is the only thing I can measure at this point in my mentorees' lives. I won't really know the real nature and scope of how successful I've been until "my kids" are grown and living as contributing members of society who, like me, "find gaps and fill them." I can wait to see if that happens for all, most, some, any of "my kids." School systems, institutions, however, cannot.

Our society demands of them that they show measurable and nearer term results, and that they do so with a predefined and rigid approach. I have no such expectations to meet; I need only do the best I can and hope it works. (Plus, even as I'm "doing my thing," the schools are still out there doing whatever it is they do.) The extent to which it works is fine because I don't have to meet any specific target with regard to the kids' performance, and whatever improvement my efforts effect is still improvement. With the type of mentoring I do, I may or may not "win," but neither I nor "my kids" can lose.

As I've said, I think mentoring is great and we need more of it. Unfortunately I don't think we're going to get it. NYC executives didn't fail to turn around failing schools, they failed to try. The ads were ineffective. Expecting retired people,...[given] the enormous effort required, to try to teach in a ... school is reflective of an overestimation of human nature. We're not that good. The golf course or an inner city hellhole school? Hmmmn. Fore!

I don't want to appear cynical, but... I am. They're out there, in the millions, those kids who need and would benefit from outreach. Again, when assigning scarce resources to the problem, practicality is a major consideration. First you'd have to prove that a sufficient number of people would be willing to do what a mentor would need to do in order to be effective. Going into "bad" neighborhoods? A deal breaker for most. Taking on the problems of troubled youths?

If you can prove there's enough people willing to commit to a process from which they cannot casually withdraw, then you face the mountain of institutionalizing the process. The rules you now create for yourself will have to be subject to the rules of the new institution, and as you say, thereby have their effectiveness blunted. I am not qualified to do a cost/benefit analysis of all this, but I would be skeptical of its practicality.

I have not suggested that money is an effective measure of success or happiness. We seem to have a very different perspective on poverty. That's too large a subject, however. You have to particularize. What I'm talking about is Black poverty in America.

Parenting is the most important of human activities. It's many things, but one of them is birthright. This consists of both family and cultural ties. It is the anchor for parenting. It's the village of which you speak. It is literally priceless. What happens when you rob people of their birthright? When you deny them cultural continuity of any kind, while at the same time denying them any opportunity to learn your culture and assimilate? When you make it a crime to teach them to read and write? When you suppress and concentrate them at every turn? When you deny them the right to form families? When you sell their children?

We didn't "free" the slaves, we brutally put down a rebellion. We broke the last major slave network on the earth. Millions of former slaves were now free to fend for themselves in the disaster zone of the defeated South. Free of pesky skills, money, culture, education. Yes, it would have been serendipitous indeed if the freed slaves could have encountered people who would teach them about culture and traditions and parenting. It happened to Louis Armstrong, for one. Father, absent. Mother, prostitute. He knew abuse and crushing poverty. He was taken in by a family who mentored him. The results speak for themselves. So do the results of the vast majority who don't enjoy this great good fortune. They cannot pass along parenting skills they themselves do not possess. Such skills are not instinctive, they are the cultural and family birthright. There is no way to overstate the importance of this birthright, or the damage caused by destroying it. I called it cultural genocide and that is exactly what I think it is. The effects of such an occurrence do not disappear quickly. Frankly, they have disappeared faster than I would ever have expected them to, with 75% of the black population above the poverty line. With a black president.

But the 25% are a problem. A big problem. A problem that I'm not sure you have seen in its entirety. I'm curious about your reaction to my statement about nothing being the same in these high poverty areas. You mentioned the schools doing "whatever it is they do". The failed school is a perfect example of just how different, how inverted things become when they are attempted in a high poverty area. It's Dickensian. Literally. An institution designed to educate turned into a tool of suppression. There are no expectations. There is only a meat grinder of failure for fragile young psyches. I call them "penitentiaries lite". They're places we lock up young people, so they're not out roaming the streets.

The word gap is the measure of what a child has been exposed to. Poverty traps children in limited environments. The earlier you can expand their worlds, the better.

Red & Red Italics (not bold):
Agree.

Red Italics (not bold)
I may be mistaken, but AFAIK, those happenstances do occur; they don't occur often enough. I do my part to make sure they occur, namely through my personal efforts to effect them, for some people.

Blue:
I'm a business executive who's about to retire in a couple years. I'm nearly certain that I will remain unwilling to take a job teaching in a school system. I'm pretty sure I'd be a failure as a teacher in a school system. School systems do not allow the nature and extent of freedom and discretionary decision making that I'm used to having. They don't even allow them to the extent I had them at the start of my career or even as a teen and college student.

There's too much "red tape" and other BS; I'd quit before the school year ended. Look at what happened to Michelle Rhee in D.C. The woman was the first school chancellor to achieve improvement in student performance and all she got for it was driven out of office. "In Ms. Rhee’s three years as chancellor, elementary students’ reading proficiency was raised from 37 percent to 49 percent. Their math scores shot up from 26 percent to 49 percent as well."

And why did folks gripe about her? Because they didn't like the way she went about achieving her outcomes. She held teachers accountable and got rid of them when they didn't meet expectations. That's exactly the same thing that happens in my industry to poor performers. If I were to assume a similar role, I'm almost certain that I'd suffer the same fate as Ms. Rhee because I'd apply the same management approaches that I use in my firm and that I help my clients (Fortune 200 and comparable companies) implement and/or hone. In the corporate world, most folks (the professional staff and partner aspirants) "step-up." When it comes to governments, and teaching in particular, lots (even if not most) of folks say, "I'm not doing that; you can't make me; and I'm going to 'raise Cain' if you try."

Who the hell is going have been a high achieving business exec and retire from their emotionally and very financially rewarding career to then take a job in a school system suffused with the sort of BS that, were any of their former staff to have displayed it, they'd have fired them instantly or nearly so, or re-tasked/relegated them to a role that would inspire the person to quit on their own? I know I would not and will not.

On the other hand, I will continue to mentor kids just as I have been doing. I'll likely mentor more of them.

Purple:
Well, what am I to say of that? If you are a cynic, there's nothing wrong with appearing to be so. If you don't want to be a cynic, don't be one. (That wasn't a comment that needs a reply. I was just poking at you in jest.)

Bright Pink:
I'm sure I cannot prove or disprove there are enough such folks around. I can't even tell you I know how to create them other than by doing so at an early stage in their lives, and even that isn't something one can make happen deliberately. I can't even put my finger on what exactly has led me to have the level of commitment I do for occasionally helping others to the extent I can and do.

For now, I chalk it up to my Christian upbringing and that I try to always adhere to the principle of "do unto others as you'd have them do unto you." Were the "shoe on the other foot," I know I'd want someone who came by me and who knew they could make a difference in my life to bother to do so. So, to the extent I can and not compromise other things that are very important for me to do, I do.

Brown:
Well, what am I to say? What I do to help "my kids" could not, IMO, be done by an institutionalized system. I really think that the only way what I do with "my kids" works is when individuals own their onus to help folks who aren't as fortunate as they are.

The thing I'm not getting from your remarks is why you feel the process must be institutionalized. Truly, I'd be quite reluctant to do the mentoring I do if I were told I had to do it within the construct of some "system." I would not find the mentoring nearly as emotionally and spiritually rewarding and I would thus find another way to contribute. Perhaps I'd resort to what some of my peers do and write a check and "call it a day," so to speak. i happen to think that overcoming the "issues" my mentorees have can't be solved just by throwing money at them.

Sure, "my kids" get to do things their economic peers do not, but those things aren't the key factors in their development. I know that and that's why I don't just write a check; it's why I take an active role in making a difference. I don't have any desire to say "I gave you all this money and you wasted it." The reality is that giving money to folks who have no idea of how to make the most of it is pretty pointless. Giving money to folks who've set intangible goals for themselves, goals that once achieved cannot be taken away, and who'll thus use the money to achieve them is money well spent. I have no problem with that and that is why I'm willing to use a tidy portion of my economic resources with "my kids." It's no different than the way I dealt with tossing cash at my biological kids. Be that as it may, the lavishness isn't the key.

One thing I cannot deny, and it may be part of why the execs in NYC "didn't try." Like Mr. Trump, I do things -- as much as possible -- on my own terms, not someone else's. That's so for most folks like me or any other principal. "Systems" don't allow much of that and governmental ones even less so.

Fluorescent Blue:
I misconstrued the thrust of your remarks then. Apologies.

One thing...you and I may dramatically differ on this: though I recognize the unique circumstances that make Black poverty different from poverty in general, I think the tactics I've been applying aren't different than those I'd apply were "my kids" white. In terms of providing solid foundations, showing the value of effort and trust, truly being there when they need it, etc. works no matter one's race, but I admit I haven't mentored any poor white kids, at least not to the extent I have described in our discussion. (no particular reason for that other than my being a D.C. resident and "poor and white," AFAIK, isn't something that exists in D.C.

TO BE CONTINUED....
(Sorry, I have run out of time...Tomorrow, I will pick up where I've left off.)