Reaching troubled kids takes time, gurus say

Comical? Yes, but it points out what he’s found as a psychology professor at Loyola University who has studied violence in young people and served as an expert on the topic before courts and the U.S. Congress. For example, he says, the old “Scared Straight” program reformed kids by taking them into prison to meet raw, bitter inmates. Then someone got efficient and put this on videotape and sent it to schools. It scared good kids, he said, but some troubled kids figured, “I’ve got to be tough when I go to prison.”

It’s an example of a well-thought-out idea that is cut short — with reverse effects — by folks doing what an efficient nation like ours does best: get things done.

“We have to commit to understanding things deeply,” Garbarino told a North Dakota symposium last year at the University of Notre Dame that looked at the issues of at-risk youths. “You have to be willing to look in the dark places,” he said, referring to those difficult areas where there may not be much money or popular attention. He said he frustrates some in Congress with a lot of “it depends” statements.

He offers things to balance: Research shows that children with one or two risk factors — poverty, bad neighborhood, racism, etc. — may not see a big drop in their IQ. But you can be assured of trouble, he said, when you pile on those factors. He said the reverse is true for positive factors -- reading to children, showing confidence in them, spirituality, etc.

At lunch, William Strickland Jr., spoke of some of those positive factors: “People are assets, kids are assets.”  His evidence, he said, is a program he heads in Pittsburgh that teaches 500 youths in grades eight through 12 how to do photography, ceramics and other arts. Ninety percent go to college, he said. Granted, some of them aren’t at risk, which is good because it erases the stigma for the others and raises the expectations for everyone.  In the process of learning art, he said, the children are mentored. And they get to meet some of the greats in art.

— Joseph Dits in the South Bend Tribune, 17 March 2006

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THE WAY IT IS

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I am only one, but still I am one.
I cannot do everything, but still I can
    do something.
I will not refuse to do
    the something I can do.
                                                   — Helen Keller

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Bully

Through the long street I see a road out of Flint
Through the long street I see lots of people
Through the long street I see lots of cars
Through the long street I see the bully
Through the long street I see what the bully does
Through the long street I see the road end
Through the long street I see a dead end
Through the long street I see cars escaping
I wish the car would take me too.

— Adam, Buckley *

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To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions;
both dispense with the necessity of reflection.
                                                                                                        — Albert Einstein

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