Hustling, Schools and the Education of Inner City Boys- Reflections on a Talk by Street Lit Authoer "Jihad"
Dr Mark Naison
Jihad’s talk in our Hip Hop Street Lit Narratives class last week helped me understand some very important issues- one of which is the failure of schools to engage working class students of color, particularly boys. Jihad , a very successful "street lit" author, was one of those boys who found nothing in school to connect with. Even though he had black teachers, even though black notables came to his school to talk about their successes and inspire students to emulate them, and even though he was clearly incredibly intelligent, Jihad was stubbornly resistant to reading and any form of academic engagement. It was only when he went to prison, in his late teens that he immersed himself in books. It was only then that he became immersed in reading and discovered that history and philosophy and political theory could help him make sense of the world and his own place in it
As Jihad described his experiences, it became clear to me that the environment he grew up in, during the late 70’s and early 80’s, was very different from the Black, inner city communities I had spent time in during the late 60’s. First of all, political revolutionaries were no longer a presence. They were not giving speeches on street corners, not selling their newspapers outside the convenience story, not talking about Black unity and revolution at the dinner table or in the barber shop. But something else, maybe something even more important, was also missing from Jihad’s life, and that is black men who went to work in the morning and came back at night after working a long hard day with money in their pocket and the satisfaction of a job well done. Those kind of black men were still highly visible in inner city neighborhoods in the late 60’s- they worked in steel mills and auto factories, drove trucks and buses, owned their own cabs and the like .But by the time Jihad was growing up, the black male working class was fast disappearing as a force in inner city neighborhods. The only Black people making good money, legally, were people working in white collar occupations, often with college degrees and they were moving out of inner city neighborhoods into the suburbs
Given this, what kind of Black men did Jihad see and interact with during his childhood and adolescence? To an extraordinary extent, the black men Jihad was meeting, interacting with and modeling himself on, including his own father, were getting most of their income in the underground economy and were living lives that occasionally offered great rewards, but also involved danger and instability. I think we need to probe implications of this economic transformation.
What does it meant to grow up in a neighborhood where the primary source of work and income, at least for men, is illegal activity? In the neighborhood Jihad grew up in, “hustling” was more than just a source of income, it was a whole way of life with its own language, forms of dress, gender roles and family dynamics. Men who made their money illegally, and were at constant risk of imprisonment and death, were unlikely to commit themselves to the kind of stable family relationships that someone who worked in a steel mill or an auto plant might do.. They moved in and out of relationships with women and had only a tangential relationship to the children they fathered.
In addition, their ways of earning income seemed to have little relationship to books or to the disciplined learning environments schools tried to provide. What made men successful in the underground economy was bravery, quick thinking, and capacity to persuade and inspire through ghetto centric language that barely bore little relationship to the vocabulary and sentence structure offered in third grade reading and social studies. Hustlers communicated through an insider’s language that was indecipherable to most middle class people, black as well as white. But it was that language that was the language of money, the language of success, and the language of power in the neighborhood Jihad grew up in!!!
As a bright male child growing up in an environment where most of the money came from illegal activities, and where the men involved in those activities dressed, spoke and carried themselves in a way that bore no resemblance to anything presented in school, Jihad naturally concluded that school had no relevance to someone like him. Money, power, respect, in his neighborhood, and in his family—at least for boys came through mastery of the hustlers code, the hustlers language, the hustlers lifestyle, and ultimately, through recruitment into the alternative economy that hustlers has created.
Once a young man has the realization that the street economy is going to be their only path to money and respect and the good things in life- and for some it can come as early as 8 years old--, teachers are facing an uphill battle to get them engaged in reading writing and math, especially since the language used in teaching those subjects, whether in readers, or on tests, is totally different from the language of the street economy
What you have then is a battle of language loyalties with the teacher on one side and the hustlers the young men aspire to be on the other, and that is a battle the teacher will usually lose –not because the hustler’s language is “blacker” or more ‘authentic” but because in the young person’s neighborhood, the hustler’s language is the language of
SUCCESS, or at least what little success there is
From the outside, we may think that turning off school, for a young person who grew up the way Jihad did, is short sighted and self-destructive, but given the limited opportunities for employment in the legal economy that he saw in his neighborhood and family, looking to the hustling culture rather than school as the place to invest his energies may be a rational decision
If this analysis is correct, we are going to face an uphill battle in trying to get inner city boys to become engaged in school unless we can rebuild and reconstruct legal economic opportunities for men of color that equal those offered by hustling and the underground economy
Children look at what they see around them and decide, fairly early what works, and what doesn’t. And in many neighborhoods around this country, there is no evidence, especially for boys that school leads to economic opportunities for people like them.
Until that changes, don’t expect school reform to accomplish very much
Dr Mark Naison
December 4, 2009
Friday, December 4, 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
A Proposal That Banks That Received Bailout Money Fund After School Centers in NY Schools
Friends
After reading a powerful commentary from a friend who heads one of the largest Community Organizations in the Bronx about the growing threat of juvenile diabetes, which is especially acute in the Bronx because our children don't get exercise inside or outside school, I have a proposal to make to every bank headquartered in New York City which received federal bailout funds, beginning with Goldman Sachs
Here's my proposal-
Why don't you take 200 million dollars from the billions of dollars you have assigned to your bonus pools and use it to pay the NYC Department of Education to open the after school and night centers in New York City public schools which were shut during the fiscal crisis of the 70's.
That's right, for less than $200 million dollars, you could open ever elementary school, middle school and high school in the city from 3-5 PM and 7-9 PM for sports, supervised play, dance and excercise classes and the arts. This is what many of had growing up in New York City in the 1950's and 1960's and this is what our children need now, for their physical health, and collective well being
And if any funds are left from that fund, give the money to the Parks Department to hire
Parks recreation supervisors like Hilton White to run outdoor sports and recreation programs in the City's Vest Pocket Parks!
If you think of this as an investment in the nation's future, it is a much wiser and more cost effective use of your profits than bonuses for your top exectives. Think of the
reduction in health care costs and law enforcement that might ensue.
If you believe that this is a worthy proposal, please pass it on far and wide to people in
education, politics and business.
Sincerely
Mark D Naison
Professor of African American Studies and History
Fordham University
Principal Investigator, Bronx African American History Project
After reading a powerful commentary from a friend who heads one of the largest Community Organizations in the Bronx about the growing threat of juvenile diabetes, which is especially acute in the Bronx because our children don't get exercise inside or outside school, I have a proposal to make to every bank headquartered in New York City which received federal bailout funds, beginning with Goldman Sachs
Here's my proposal-
Why don't you take 200 million dollars from the billions of dollars you have assigned to your bonus pools and use it to pay the NYC Department of Education to open the after school and night centers in New York City public schools which were shut during the fiscal crisis of the 70's.
That's right, for less than $200 million dollars, you could open ever elementary school, middle school and high school in the city from 3-5 PM and 7-9 PM for sports, supervised play, dance and excercise classes and the arts. This is what many of had growing up in New York City in the 1950's and 1960's and this is what our children need now, for their physical health, and collective well being
And if any funds are left from that fund, give the money to the Parks Department to hire
Parks recreation supervisors like Hilton White to run outdoor sports and recreation programs in the City's Vest Pocket Parks!
If you think of this as an investment in the nation's future, it is a much wiser and more cost effective use of your profits than bonuses for your top exectives. Think of the
reduction in health care costs and law enforcement that might ensue.
If you believe that this is a worthy proposal, please pass it on far and wide to people in
education, politics and business.
Sincerely
Mark D Naison
Professor of African American Studies and History
Fordham University
Principal Investigator, Bronx African American History Project
Friday, November 27, 2009
Schools and the Business Model
A New Notorious Phd Jam
If we ran schools like businesses
Everything would be fine
We'd turn all our classrooms
Into little assembly lines
We'd test our students daily
On spelling history and math
And fire their teachers quickly
If by chance they do not pass
We'll grade our schools too
On an annual basis
And fire all those principals
Whose scores remain in stasis
Cause the American business model
Is the envy of the world
So let's retrench,downsize and outsource
All our failing boys and girls
Education is too important
To leave to those who teach
Let's rationalize and privatize
And assess all within reach
We did that in our businesses
And look at the results
We got AIG, GM,and Lehman Brothers
They all went boom and bust
A hundred twenty bank failures
A trillion in bailout funds
An economy left in shambles
Is this how we want schools to run?
A New Notorious Phd Jam
If we ran schools like businesses
Everything would be fine
We'd turn all our classrooms
Into little assembly lines
We'd test our students daily
On spelling history and math
And fire their teachers quickly
If by chance they do not pass
We'll grade our schools too
On an annual basis
And fire all those principals
Whose scores remain in stasis
Cause the American business model
Is the envy of the world
So let's retrench,downsize and outsource
All our failing boys and girls
Education is too important
To leave to those who teach
Let's rationalize and privatize
And assess all within reach
We did that in our businesses
And look at the results
We got AIG, GM,and Lehman Brothers
They all went boom and bust
A hundred twenty bank failures
A trillion in bailout funds
An economy left in shambles
Is this how we want schools to run?
Friday, November 20, 2009
Violence in a Familiar Place
Young People Left Behind in Morrisania’s Housing Renaissance
Dr Mark Naison
Fordham University
When I picked up the paper two days ago and read about the shooting of Vada Vasquez on a Bronx street corner, I felt a chill go through me. Not only was it depressing to read about another young person hit by a stray bullet in an inner city neighborhood- there have been too many such stories in recent weeks- but the corner the shooting took place on, Home Street and Prospect Avenue, is one I have driven by hundreds of times, and walked through at least twenty times when leading tours of Historic Morrisania for teachers, student groups and visitors from abroad.
This particular shooting took place in the heart of what was once the Bronx’s largest and most dynamic Black community, a place which hummed with vitality in the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s and produced an unmatched variety of poplar music ranging from jazz, to mambo, to doo wop, to salsa and funk. Even in the 70’s, when the neighborhood was devastated by fires, young people living in it helped create a new music form- hip hop- which eventually became the voice of disfranchised young people throughout the world. Today, Morissania is still a center of musical creativity, with new groups of immigrants form Africa, Mexico and the Dominican Republic fusing their musical cultures with hip hop and R & B. The very corner on which Vada Vasquez was shot, Home and Prospect, was the first place I saw young people in the Bronx performing a new kind of street dance that they had created called “Getting Lite.”
But all of this wonderful history meant little when I thought of Vada Vasquez, lying on life support in a local hospital, or the 16 year old who allegedly shot her,
Carvett Gentles, who may spend most of his life in jail. Why did this tragedy take place? And why was hardly anybody who lives in Morrisania surprised that someothing like this happened?
Some of the blame for this shooting has to be assigned to the easy availability of guns on the streets of New York,, many of them brought in from states like Virgninia which make it as easy to buy a gun as it is to buy a portable CD player
But much of it has to be attributed to the misguided priorities of those who have controlled community economic development in the City of New York.
From the outside, the neighborhood Vada Vasquez was shot in looks like a great New York City success story. If you walk ten blocks in any direction from the corner of Prospect and Home, you will see literally thousands of units of new residential housing placed on what were once vacant lots, some of them townhouses, some of them apartment buildings, most of them built in the last five years,
When I first encountered this wave of new construction several years ago, I was inclined to see it as a kind of Bronx Renaissance until Leroi Archibald, a long time Bronx activist and one of the wisest men I know said to me “Mark, what are they going to do with all the kids who are going to leave here? They haven’t built a single youth center or recreation facility along with all the housing. Those kids are all going to be out in the street and getting into trouble.”
More prophetic words have rarely been uttered. With thousands of units of new housing going up in Morrisania, virtually all of them being occupied by families with young children, why hasn’t someone in City Planning or HPD seen fit to make sure at least one new youth center, either operated by the City or a non profit organization, be built in the neighborhood.
Worse yet, why haven’t local elected officials pressed the Department of Education to keep every school in the neighborhood- and there are at least ten within walking distance of Home and Prospect- open from 3 PM to 10 PM with arts, sports and supervise recreation?
Morrisania is a neighborhood filled with teenagers who have nothing to do when they leave school- there are no jobs-- in part because there are almost no stores- no sports programs, no art programs, no places where they can congregate under adult supervision
Should anyone be surprised if they hang out on the streets, sell drugs, join gangs? What else do they have to do? Where else do they have to go?
It’s time that policy makers at all levels make youth issues a top priority when doing community economic development.
First of all, whenever large numbers of housing units are placed in particular neighborhood, youth centers should be built which offer free sports and arts programs to local children and adolescents. I am going to establish an arbitrary ratio- 5,000 units of new housing equals one youth center. Let’s make this official city policy.
Secondly, every school in New York City should be open from 3 PM to 9 PM for supervised recreation under the direction of licensed, public school teachers. This is what we had fifty years ago in New York, and we need to bring this program back. Our young people desperately need mentors like Vincent Tibbs, who ran the night center at PS 99, only two blocks from Prospect and Home, who influenced thousands of Morrisania young people to stay in school and keep out of trouble. As a model for the rest of the city, let’s open a Vincent Tibbs Center in PS 99 and invite all the young people in the neighborhood to use it on a regular basis. I’ll bet if we do that, there will be a lot less shootings
Finally, let’s put back the recreation supervisors in the City’s vest pocket parks, positions which were eliminated in the 70’s, and which we desperately need today. Fiftty years ago, just ten blocks from Prospect and Home, a “parkie” named Hilton White ran a community basketball program that served hundreds of youngsters and sent scores of its graduates to college, including 3 of the starters on the Texas Western team that won the NCAA Championship in 1966. Our young people need mentors like Hilton White even more now than they did then. Bring the Parkies back!
The policies I am suggesting all cost money. But no more than the money it takes to put and keep young people in prison.
It’s time we invest in young people before they turn to acts of violence
If we don’t, we are going to read more and more stories about broken dreams and wasted lives.
Mark Naison
November 20, 2009
Young People Left Behind in Morrisania’s Housing Renaissance
Dr Mark Naison
Fordham University
When I picked up the paper two days ago and read about the shooting of Vada Vasquez on a Bronx street corner, I felt a chill go through me. Not only was it depressing to read about another young person hit by a stray bullet in an inner city neighborhood- there have been too many such stories in recent weeks- but the corner the shooting took place on, Home Street and Prospect Avenue, is one I have driven by hundreds of times, and walked through at least twenty times when leading tours of Historic Morrisania for teachers, student groups and visitors from abroad.
This particular shooting took place in the heart of what was once the Bronx’s largest and most dynamic Black community, a place which hummed with vitality in the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s and produced an unmatched variety of poplar music ranging from jazz, to mambo, to doo wop, to salsa and funk. Even in the 70’s, when the neighborhood was devastated by fires, young people living in it helped create a new music form- hip hop- which eventually became the voice of disfranchised young people throughout the world. Today, Morissania is still a center of musical creativity, with new groups of immigrants form Africa, Mexico and the Dominican Republic fusing their musical cultures with hip hop and R & B. The very corner on which Vada Vasquez was shot, Home and Prospect, was the first place I saw young people in the Bronx performing a new kind of street dance that they had created called “Getting Lite.”
But all of this wonderful history meant little when I thought of Vada Vasquez, lying on life support in a local hospital, or the 16 year old who allegedly shot her,
Carvett Gentles, who may spend most of his life in jail. Why did this tragedy take place? And why was hardly anybody who lives in Morrisania surprised that someothing like this happened?
Some of the blame for this shooting has to be assigned to the easy availability of guns on the streets of New York,, many of them brought in from states like Virgninia which make it as easy to buy a gun as it is to buy a portable CD player
But much of it has to be attributed to the misguided priorities of those who have controlled community economic development in the City of New York.
From the outside, the neighborhood Vada Vasquez was shot in looks like a great New York City success story. If you walk ten blocks in any direction from the corner of Prospect and Home, you will see literally thousands of units of new residential housing placed on what were once vacant lots, some of them townhouses, some of them apartment buildings, most of them built in the last five years,
When I first encountered this wave of new construction several years ago, I was inclined to see it as a kind of Bronx Renaissance until Leroi Archibald, a long time Bronx activist and one of the wisest men I know said to me “Mark, what are they going to do with all the kids who are going to leave here? They haven’t built a single youth center or recreation facility along with all the housing. Those kids are all going to be out in the street and getting into trouble.”
More prophetic words have rarely been uttered. With thousands of units of new housing going up in Morrisania, virtually all of them being occupied by families with young children, why hasn’t someone in City Planning or HPD seen fit to make sure at least one new youth center, either operated by the City or a non profit organization, be built in the neighborhood.
Worse yet, why haven’t local elected officials pressed the Department of Education to keep every school in the neighborhood- and there are at least ten within walking distance of Home and Prospect- open from 3 PM to 10 PM with arts, sports and supervise recreation?
Morrisania is a neighborhood filled with teenagers who have nothing to do when they leave school- there are no jobs-- in part because there are almost no stores- no sports programs, no art programs, no places where they can congregate under adult supervision
Should anyone be surprised if they hang out on the streets, sell drugs, join gangs? What else do they have to do? Where else do they have to go?
It’s time that policy makers at all levels make youth issues a top priority when doing community economic development.
First of all, whenever large numbers of housing units are placed in particular neighborhood, youth centers should be built which offer free sports and arts programs to local children and adolescents. I am going to establish an arbitrary ratio- 5,000 units of new housing equals one youth center. Let’s make this official city policy.
Secondly, every school in New York City should be open from 3 PM to 9 PM for supervised recreation under the direction of licensed, public school teachers. This is what we had fifty years ago in New York, and we need to bring this program back. Our young people desperately need mentors like Vincent Tibbs, who ran the night center at PS 99, only two blocks from Prospect and Home, who influenced thousands of Morrisania young people to stay in school and keep out of trouble. As a model for the rest of the city, let’s open a Vincent Tibbs Center in PS 99 and invite all the young people in the neighborhood to use it on a regular basis. I’ll bet if we do that, there will be a lot less shootings
Finally, let’s put back the recreation supervisors in the City’s vest pocket parks, positions which were eliminated in the 70’s, and which we desperately need today. Fiftty years ago, just ten blocks from Prospect and Home, a “parkie” named Hilton White ran a community basketball program that served hundreds of youngsters and sent scores of its graduates to college, including 3 of the starters on the Texas Western team that won the NCAA Championship in 1966. Our young people need mentors like Hilton White even more now than they did then. Bring the Parkies back!
The policies I am suggesting all cost money. But no more than the money it takes to put and keep young people in prison.
It’s time we invest in young people before they turn to acts of violence
If we don’t, we are going to read more and more stories about broken dreams and wasted lives.
Mark Naison
November 20, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
A Recession Jam
by Notorious Phd
Notorious is here so don't complain
I'll be spitting rhymes like clouds bring rain
MC's that front better run for cover
We need jams that bring hope to our sisters and brothers
We're living in a world of hate and pain
Where justice fails, and greed's insane
Where the banks get bailed and the people starve
And the media lie while the rich live large
People need to take the country back
Fore the train we're riding leaves the Freedom Track
We need homes for the homeless and gyms for the kids
And release of dealers doing ten year bids
Recovery without jobs is a wrecking ball
It means tracks that rot and bridges that fall
Will we watch our dreams die and our families shatter
If we don't have work, nothing else matters
.AOLWebSuite .AOLPicturesFullSizeLink { height: 1px; width: 1px; overflow: hidden; } .AOLWebSuite a {color:blue; text-decoration: underline; cursor: pointer} .AOLWebSuite a.hsSig {cursor: default}
by Notorious Phd
Notorious is here so don't complain
I'll be spitting rhymes like clouds bring rain
MC's that front better run for cover
We need jams that bring hope to our sisters and brothers
We're living in a world of hate and pain
Where justice fails, and greed's insane
Where the banks get bailed and the people starve
And the media lie while the rich live large
People need to take the country back
Fore the train we're riding leaves the Freedom Track
We need homes for the homeless and gyms for the kids
And release of dealers doing ten year bids
Recovery without jobs is a wrecking ball
It means tracks that rot and bridges that fall
Will we watch our dreams die and our families shatter
If we don't have work, nothing else matters
.AOLWebSuite .AOLPicturesFullSizeLink { height: 1px; width: 1px; overflow: hidden; } .AOLWebSuite a {color:blue; text-decoration: underline; cursor: pointer} .AOLWebSuite a.hsSig {cursor: default}
Monday, October 26, 2009
My Thoughts on Educational "Reform"
My Thoughts on Educational Reform
Speaking in behalf of "students," especially students of color, a whole generation of self described educational reformers have systematically undermined the teaching profession and made graduation rates and performace on standardized tests the sole measure of value for what goes on in classrooms
Has this educational revolution, now in progress for more than ten years, contributed to greater economic and social equality in the United States?
The statistics show otherwise. The wealth gap in the nation, and in New York City, has continued to grow despite the imposition of a test centered
approcah to public education.
Trying to achieve social equality through education, when tax policies, health care politicies, and investment policies move in the opposite direction, will prove, in the long run, to be a Fool's Errand
It not only can't work economically,, it could very easily put students from poor and working class families at a disadvantage by forcing creativity and critical thinking skills out of the classroom in favor of skills that can be easily measured on standardized tests
From the administrative standpoint, it all makes sense- let's look for results that can be easily measured
From the teachers standpoint, it looks like a conspiracy to take creativity and agency out of their profession.and create a new class of administrators who view teachers as pieces on a chessboard.
Dr Mark Naison
Fordham University
October 26, 2009
Speaking in behalf of "students," especially students of color, a whole generation of self described educational reformers have systematically undermined the teaching profession and made graduation rates and performace on standardized tests the sole measure of value for what goes on in classrooms
Has this educational revolution, now in progress for more than ten years, contributed to greater economic and social equality in the United States?
The statistics show otherwise. The wealth gap in the nation, and in New York City, has continued to grow despite the imposition of a test centered
approcah to public education.
Trying to achieve social equality through education, when tax policies, health care politicies, and investment policies move in the opposite direction, will prove, in the long run, to be a Fool's Errand
It not only can't work economically,, it could very easily put students from poor and working class families at a disadvantage by forcing creativity and critical thinking skills out of the classroom in favor of skills that can be easily measured on standardized tests
From the administrative standpoint, it all makes sense- let's look for results that can be easily measured
From the teachers standpoint, it looks like a conspiracy to take creativity and agency out of their profession.and create a new class of administrators who view teachers as pieces on a chessboard.
Dr Mark Naison
Fordham University
October 26, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Applying for Federal Stimulus Funds to Restore Night Centers to New York City Public Schools
Applying for Federal Stimulus Funds to Restore Night Centers to New York City Public Schools
I would like to propose that the New York City Department of Education apply for Stimulus Funds to re-open the night centers in the New York City Public schools, a fixture of life for young people in the City which was eliminated during the New York City Fiscal Crisis of the 1970’s
When I began doing Oral Histories with African American residents of the Bronx in the Spring of 2003 as part of the Bronx African American History Project ( www.fordham.edu/baahp), many of the respondents I interviewed, especially those in between the ages of 50 and 70, mentioned night centers in the public schools as important factors in their personal and professional development.
From the early 1950’s through the mid 1970’s, every elementary school in New York City was open 3-5 PM and 7-9 PM for supervised recreation, staffed by licensed professionals who created a safe zone for young people as well as an opportunity to participate in sports and arts programs, play board games, and upon occasion, attend dances and talent shows.
The Center Directors, many of whom were New York City school teachers during the day, became important influences in the lives of young people they worked with. One of my interviewees, Howie Evans, a retired college basketball coach who serves as sports editor of the Amsterdam News, says that a Bronx night center director, Vincent Tibbs of PS 99, not only provided a model for Evans’coaching and youth work, he saved Evans life by blocking the center door to keep him from participating in a neighborhood gang fight. Several people I interviewed speak with equal reverence of Floyd Lane and Myles Dorch, directors of the Night Center of PS 18 in the South Bronx, who are responsible for sending scores of young people to play college basketball and helped hundreds of others avoid trouble and stay in school. In working class and poor neighborhoods filled with gang and drug activity, the night centers were the one place where young men and women could go where they felt safe, felt protected, and interacted with adults who not only taught them skills, but with whom they could talk to about problems with schools, family or their peers
Today, young people growing up in the Bronx, and other hard pressed neighborhoods of New York City, no longer either have this kind of safe zone or regular access to caring and sympathetic adults.
Ironically, the need for this kind of mentoring may be even greater today because family and living situations, for many young people, are more fragmented and chaotic than they were thirty or forty years ago. At a time when large number of youngsters are living in foster care, being brought up by grandparents, or reside in apartments that house multiple families, the need for adult supervised recreation is even greater than it was when the Night Centers were in their heyday. Teachers, preoccupied with test preparation and meeting standards, do not have the time to mentor their students in non academic areas, especially during the school day Privately funded community centers and recreation programs are insufficient to meet the needs of a million plus New York City school children
Reopening the night centers is the only program I know of that will instantaneously change the lives of New York City public schools students for the better. It will give them an opportunity to release tension, meet sympathetic adults, immerse themselves in sports and arts programs, and find a quiet protected place to do homework, while also providing a refuge from drug and gang acivity.
I could easily amass a large group of educators, coaches youth workers and elected officials to argue in favor of this proposal
I could think of no better use of Federal Stimulus Funds than restoring night center to the New York City Public Schools
Mark Naison
October 14, 2009
I would like to propose that the New York City Department of Education apply for Stimulus Funds to re-open the night centers in the New York City Public schools, a fixture of life for young people in the City which was eliminated during the New York City Fiscal Crisis of the 1970’s
When I began doing Oral Histories with African American residents of the Bronx in the Spring of 2003 as part of the Bronx African American History Project ( www.fordham.edu/baahp), many of the respondents I interviewed, especially those in between the ages of 50 and 70, mentioned night centers in the public schools as important factors in their personal and professional development.
From the early 1950’s through the mid 1970’s, every elementary school in New York City was open 3-5 PM and 7-9 PM for supervised recreation, staffed by licensed professionals who created a safe zone for young people as well as an opportunity to participate in sports and arts programs, play board games, and upon occasion, attend dances and talent shows.
The Center Directors, many of whom were New York City school teachers during the day, became important influences in the lives of young people they worked with. One of my interviewees, Howie Evans, a retired college basketball coach who serves as sports editor of the Amsterdam News, says that a Bronx night center director, Vincent Tibbs of PS 99, not only provided a model for Evans’coaching and youth work, he saved Evans life by blocking the center door to keep him from participating in a neighborhood gang fight. Several people I interviewed speak with equal reverence of Floyd Lane and Myles Dorch, directors of the Night Center of PS 18 in the South Bronx, who are responsible for sending scores of young people to play college basketball and helped hundreds of others avoid trouble and stay in school. In working class and poor neighborhoods filled with gang and drug activity, the night centers were the one place where young men and women could go where they felt safe, felt protected, and interacted with adults who not only taught them skills, but with whom they could talk to about problems with schools, family or their peers
Today, young people growing up in the Bronx, and other hard pressed neighborhoods of New York City, no longer either have this kind of safe zone or regular access to caring and sympathetic adults.
Ironically, the need for this kind of mentoring may be even greater today because family and living situations, for many young people, are more fragmented and chaotic than they were thirty or forty years ago. At a time when large number of youngsters are living in foster care, being brought up by grandparents, or reside in apartments that house multiple families, the need for adult supervised recreation is even greater than it was when the Night Centers were in their heyday. Teachers, preoccupied with test preparation and meeting standards, do not have the time to mentor their students in non academic areas, especially during the school day Privately funded community centers and recreation programs are insufficient to meet the needs of a million plus New York City school children
Reopening the night centers is the only program I know of that will instantaneously change the lives of New York City public schools students for the better. It will give them an opportunity to release tension, meet sympathetic adults, immerse themselves in sports and arts programs, and find a quiet protected place to do homework, while also providing a refuge from drug and gang acivity.
I could easily amass a large group of educators, coaches youth workers and elected officials to argue in favor of this proposal
I could think of no better use of Federal Stimulus Funds than restoring night center to the New York City Public Schools
Mark Naison
October 14, 2009
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