"Heads, I Win; Tails, You Lose": Today's Realities in the General Population and at Dunbar

Abstract

WE HAVE LOST HOPE! No longer do we view educational attainment as the passport to the good life. Our have lost faith in their ability to They see overt and covert evidence and signals that tell them daily: you cannot learn. The mass media, both print and nonprint, is a bane to African American youth. We have read study after study berating public schools to the extent that schools are now X-rated. Nobody is going to help us but us. Our must be made to realize that education is our best weapon against hopelessness. According to a Louis Harris poll, 60 percent of Americans rate public schools as only fair or poor. Since they did not ask me, I suspect we African Americans would rate the public schools higher because public schools are the only source of hope for African American youngsters. What are some of the realities in today's schools? According to the General Accounting Office's October 1988 survey of shelter operators, government agencies, and other social service organizations in 40 large urban areas, nearly 68,000 aged 16 or younger are homeless on any given night, sleeping in shelters, churches, abandoned buildings, cars, and various other settings. Another 186,000 are housed precariously on any night, staying temporarily with friends or relatives. A 1987 study in Maryland found that the federal and state governments combined spent more than $454 million to provide public assistance to 6,633 first-time teenaged mothers in the state, at a cost to each Maryland taxpayer of $154. A report in the September 1989 issue of Pediatrics stated that latchkey children are twice as likely to drink