Pubdate: Fri, 15 Mar 2002
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education, The (US)
Copyright: 2002 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
Contact:  http://chronicle.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/84
Author: RICHARD A. COUTO

LESSONS FROM CHILDREN ON THE FRONT LINES OF TERROR

Recently, I was reading a student's journal about his community service.

In it, he described an inner-city middle-school child whom he tutored and 
whose uncle had been shot and killed the year before.

My student reflected on a parallel universe of violence-filled streets with 
which he was totally unfamiliar.

His words reaffirmed the lessons that I, too, have gleaned from the 
children of inner-city Richmond, Va., about vulnerability to terror and 
violence that are especially relevant today.

Several years ago, two classes of my sophomore students, a colleague, and I 
interviewed detained juveniles, both boys and girls, for the Richmond 
juvenile court -- the results of which were published in Mending Broken 
Promises: Justice for Children at Risk (Kendall/Hunt Publishing, 2000). Our 
task was to ascertain the gaps in services and the unmet needs of the 
children and families whom the court served.

We asked about 50 of the detained youth to construct a fictional world: the 
family, schools, and neighborhoods of two imaginary juveniles, Denise and 
Shorty, who got in trouble with the law. Most were enthusiastic about the 
project.

We were not probing their backgrounds but making them research-team members 
and giving them a chance to share what they knew.

Their answers made it clear that the children of our inner cities are no 
strangers to fear and violence.

Those we interviewed were certain that Denise and Shorty,like other 
inner-city children, would have known at least one homicide victim or seen 
at least one murder in their neighborhood by the age of 12. They were just 
as sure that Denise and Shorty heard gunfire in their neighborhoods at 
least twice a month.

The boys in particular described a world in which being the target of 
gunfire is simply part of life's uncertainty. Justas most people understand 
that the next time they cross the street they may be hit by a car, these 
boys lived with the sense that the next corner they turned mightbe their 
last. The girls spoke of lives in which violence in the home occurred all 
too often.

The detention center offered more security than some of them had ever known.

James Garbarino, professor of human development at Cornell, calls the 
neighborhoods where these children live "war zones." Poverty, unemployment, 
poor schools, low educational attainment, and fractured families are 
shockingly pervasive.

A burgeoning global economy manifests itself perversely in the trade of 
drugs from Latin America and the Middle East. The annual number of 
homicides in Richmond in the 1990s exceeded the number of victims of 
terrorist violence in Northern Ireland for any year since 1977.

What can the children of our inner cities teach us as we confront a new 
sense of our own vulnerability?

First, such young people remind us that violence and terror grow in a soil 
of war-zone neighborhoods and can flourish even without guerrilla camps or 
international networks.

They portray a vicious cycle in which victims later become perpetrators. 
Before anyone becomes a juvenile offender, chances are he or she was an 
offended juvenile -- abused and neglected by adults, unsupported by social 
structures.

The boys with whom we spoke stressed that Shorty very likely lacked a 
stable family environment and strong male role model. His dad was missing 
- -- shot, "locked up," or simply absent -- but missing, in any case. 
Shorty's mom was a big part of the problem in some accounts. "She smokes, 
drinks, and does drugs." In other versions, "his mother is working two or 
threejobs" and, consequently, "doesn't spend enough time with the family." 
His family were "survivors who didn't have enough money."

Surviving was not good enough for Shorty. He sold drugs for money and what 
it buys. He derived his sense of self-respect from externals -- clothes and 
a car as well as the girls that they might attract -- and from the 
appearance of power, especially in the form of a gun. "Once you got a gun, 
you're on top of the world; that's how he sees it anyway." His desire for 
respect, his covetousness of things that he could not have, and his 
fractious relationships with his peers -- marred by insecurity and fear -- 
dragged him down.

But, whatever his circumstances, when Shorty fired a gun in a standoff with 
Leon, another young drug dealer, and hit a little girl sitting on the front 
steps of her home, he became a perpetrator of violence as well as a victim.

The boys emphasized that circumstances played a part in Shorty's fate, but 
they also understood that he had choices.

One described "flippin' time," a moment of truth in middle school when a 
boy decides to flip to the streets and the promise of easy money rather 
than pursue success through school work and discipline. They were clear 
that juvenile offenders know right from wrong and acknowledged that they 
contributeto their own problems by "not thinking" when they commit a crime.

Another youth wryly noted, "If people thought about things, half of us 
wouldn't be here."

The boys held core beliefs in personal responsibility, which is implicit in 
the choices made at "flippin' time." They were sure that alternatives to 
violence existed.

Some suggested that Shorty could have stayed at home or simply "avoided 
Leon." They also placed limits on violence, their own rules of war. "You 
don't fire guns in the daylight, everyone knows that -- it could kill a 
little kid."

The female juvenile offenders also recognized the limitations of their 
environments, but were more optimistic that life offers second chances and 
that they had the potential to take advantage of those opportunities. The 
girls' stories featured themes of responsibility for other members of the 
family, a search for meaningful relationships, and the importance of 
nurturing in a child's life. They assumed that Denise's grandmother 
supplied the support she needed to overcome her mother's abusive boyfriend.

By sharing their views on the origins of terror and violence, inner-city 
children can also teach us how to deal with those forces.

The murky distinction they describe between victims and perpetrators 
reminds us of a fundamental truth: Those of us outside the inner city who 
portray young offenders as "bad seeds" are, in fact, excusing ourselves for 
our part in the "poor soil" of failing schools and war-zone neighborhoods 
where Americans have planted our children.

Invoking the culpability of perpetrators of violence and terror, 
internationally or within our inner cities, rings hollow unless we also 
commit to caring for one another and to nurturing human life. Clearly, we 
have war-zone neighborhoods because we have too little sense of 
responsibility for each other.

In his community service, my student discovered parallel social universes.

How will higher education help other students discover them and, more 
important, eradicate the severe distinctions between them? Classroom 
programs work to prevent the violence that children do, but where are the 
programs to prevent the violence done to children?

Doubtless, higher education will respond to September 11 and its aftermath 
with new courses and proposals to study an almost infinite array of related 
topics.

As we work to understand the world of the newly vulnerable, however, we 
must also pay attention to those who have so long been threatened by the 
racism, poverty, and social indifference that destroys American democratic 
values from within.

Beyond external threats, the fight against terror and violence needs to 
extend to our inner cities and to the pockets of rural poverty at home.

Service learning, community service, and action research forge the best 
defense of our most vulnerable children.

My student is so moved by his discovery of a parallel universe of 
vulnerable others that he wants to introduce service learning to elementary 
and secondary schools in the state.

He has asked me to help. Will he succeed?

I don't know. Will this mean more work for me? Undoubtedly. Is it worth it? 
Yes, because I believe education should play a larger and more-effective 
role in analyzing and solving our social and civic problems.

The signs give us hope that higher education is moving in the direction of 
accepting this role. Campus Compact, a national coalition of 743 college 
presidents, has renewed a call for the civic responsibility of colleges by 
renewing their role as "agents of democracy" and leading students to 
"embrace the duties of active citizenship and civic participation."

This means faculty members and administrators must step forward to help 
students and communities "explore new ways of fulfilling the promise of 
justice and dignity of all," including children in poverty and the 
unemployed of our inner cities. More than 100 years ago, John Dewey 
espoused the means to a democratic education: listening to one another; 
deliberating critically about common issues; arriving at solutions to 
mutual problems creatively in a community setting; and working together to 
find solutions.

An array of community partners, such as the Richmond Juvenile Court, have 
endless needs for program evaluations, problem assessments, and other 
assistance.

In this new civic infrastructure role, we will study with -- not merely 
about -- those on the front lines of our inner cities. If we listen to the 
people whom we are accustomed to telling others about, we will learn about 
ourselves.

One juvenile offender put it plainly: "There are people who don't see what 
they don't want to look at. ... It's there, but they don't want to see it. 
So it's not there 'cause they don't look at it."

We may not want to look at the nature of our own "flippin' time," and the 
risk we run as a nation that, as a victim of terror, we will also become 
its perpetrator by trusting too much in force.

We may also want to avoid seeing the need for a second front in the war on 
terrorism.

That front defends democratic principles of equality, community, and 
opportunity -- and recognizes that they are violated regularly in the lives 
of people whom we have made all but invisible at home as well as abroad.

Yet with community-based pedagogies of service learning and action 
research, we can see, as the journal of my student shows, what we don't 
ordinarily look at. We can also find a glimmer of a broader protection 
against terror and a more certain defense of democratic principles.

Richard A. Couto is professor of leadership studies at the University of 
Richmond.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart