“Why are we to look at Elio and see a future entry-level worker rather than to see him, as we see our own kids, as perhaps a future doctor, dancer, artist, poet, priest, psychologist, or teacher, or whatever else he might someday desire to be? Why not, for that matter, look at him and see the only thing he really is: a seven-year-old child” -Jonathan Kozol
The arguments of Jonathan Kozol are neither a coldly analytic generalization of the plight that thrusts its shadow over these children, nor are they a reductionist’s masquerade in which the dimensionality of their situation is equated to genetic “fitness” or “incapable” human beings. Rather, Kozol speaks of an entirely different story, a story that, surprisingly, unveils a world of bright crayons, daily prayers of thankfulness, warm hugs and trips to a nearby candy-store. He paints a picture of human lives and human drama - a place in which even the most bleak of futures gleams with the nostalgic sweetness of a window-side memory. However, as in all great stories, the reality of these children’s lives looms overhead, casting the reminder that even such immense beauty as this can be destroyed.
In his book, Ordinary Resurrections, Kozol makes the point of a rising level of racial discrimination, exacerbated disparity of wealth, and the prospect of the “American Dream” quickly slipping away from the fingers of inner city children. He speaks particularly of the children attending schools in Mott Haven, a neighborhood in the Bronx of New York City. Kozol, now a retired grade school teacher from Massachusetts, visits the children in Mott Haven when time allows. He makes special note of two good friends: Katrice and Mother Martha, who share the front line in fighting for the humanity of these children. They run St. Ann?s Church in Mott Haven, and provide it as a neutral ground for the children to convene safely after school. St. Ann’s works closely with the public schools of the area in hopes of protecting the children from the snares of a society apathetic towards their situation. However, both the local schools and St. Ann’s are desperate for funding - primarily driven forward by a passionate few.
Kozol characterizes the silent enemy as being the privatization of America’s educational system. Herein lies the problem: those with the economic ability are able to vacate into the suburbs. They are then able to, over time, redirect school funding towards their own neighborhoods simply because of the wealth they posses. As this occurs, investment in the middle and upper class suburbs erects a financial barrier, preventing the impoverished from settling into those neighborhoods. This barrier then pushes the impoverished deeper and deeper into the inner city. Because of the low investment of inner-city property, industries are enticed to build their environmentally caustic plants and factories. Additionally, most businesses refuse to set shop in such areas because of the lack of capital investment. Even if they were to build there, could they even survive in such a depressed area? Crime rates rise because of the eroding community structure and high rates of unemployment. To further exacerbate the problem, the impoverished haven’t the resources to mobilize against the problem - their voices being silenced by the society that brings about their oppression.
And so, the children within these neighborhoods are left within an unaesthetic, polluted and dangerous environment. The medical implications of this are frightening - these children commonly suffer from asthma because of the high level of smog around their homes. They have little representation in government, and through the further privatization of our educational system, they have no ability to escape from this prison - locked within the unscalable walls of financial barbarism.
Kozol makes a rather simple plea regarding these matters. He poses the question, If children in other parts of the nation can receive a fair education and the chance to prosper, why cannot these children? Children are indeed children, whether they live in Mott Haven or in Suburbia, USA. They can all be empathetic, compassionate, playful and full of wonder - they all can paint colorful pictures of their families, and can all pick a bouquet of dandelions for their favorite teacher. Children are a powerful symbol of human intrinsic worth - a sober reminder of what is and is not just within this world. And so, we must acknowledge how painful it is to watch children suffer by the “invisible hand” of social forces over which they have no control.
St. Ann’s Church of Mott Haven acts as a safe and nurturing environment for the children. After school, they have the choice to convene in the halls of the church, have meals, do homework, engage with their schoolmates and overall, have the support of a few passionate people willing to work day and night to ensure these children their needs. Katrice and Mother Martha were both people that the children looked up to; they were role models and councilors by the most romantic definition.
Regarding the need for a nurturing environment, we must come to define what a nurturing environment is. In an essay I wrote entitled, The Role of the Psychodynamic Self in Social “Progress” I attempted to define a basic archetypical idea of such an environment in the context of Dialectical Naturalism, a philosophy of interaction with both the Earth and Society.
Through the tenants of Dialectical Naturalism we are given a definition of society and humanity concerning its development and Progression upon the Earth. In the political framework of Libertarian Municipalism, we are then given a community-based way of life in which we, as a society, shall set out to Progress through a new approach of social interaction. We are then given the opportunity to sculpt a cultural framework built upon a rational foundation in which we are brought face to face with that from which we have been alienated for so long. Our culture shall symbolize and model these factors of interaction into modes of cultural cognition.
We can then establish a synergistic relationship between culture and society embracing our needs defined through human nature. Therefore, through an understanding of our psychology, sociology, ethnology and physiology, we are given the answers regarding what we need in our interaction with First and Second nature. As our socio-culture expands epistemologically, we shall come to better understand our needs, in turn, addressing those needs through our interactions with First and Second Nature. [Davis 2001]
Mentioned in the excerpt are two distinct “natures” - respectively, First Nature: the ecological community, and Second Nature: the social community. Our interaction is then characterized through a continuum of development in which we express our interdependence through many forms of cooperation. Within this continuum of development, there exists a dynamic yet latent potentiality to be realized through the dialectical ontology of our existence. This potentiality is, in actuality, our human nature. To live and express ourselves, fulfilling our needs defined through human nature is to realize our potentiality. Dialectical Naturalists argue that in the realization of this potentiality we will be able to live life as it is meant to be - the meaning of our existence being causally grounded in our needs.
And so, the gist of this excerpt is to model society around a structure that focuses upon human needs, the expanding understanding of human needs and the nurturing of those needs through a democratic and municipal political framework.
Because of this stance, I contend that the problems mentioned in Kozols book require radical solutions. Rather than reiterating the dogmas of our culture, setting profit maximization and unrelentless economic growth as more important to social health than a nurturing and egalitarian educational system, we must stand up and rethink the priorities we hold of social development.
What do children need? Do they need mass accumulations of consumer goods, or do they need to starve or be left without shelter amidst an impersonal society? Do they need less of a community presence, less of an influence by true role models, or less of a loving family? Surely, most of us would agree that these are certainly not needs.
Because of this, I pose a simple question: why do we not focus our notions of social progress upon the vision of ensuring that children ? all children ? are able to grow up within a nurturing environment? Why is it so very difficult to grasp such an idea, especially since many of us, whether we are the affluent or impoverished, are indeed parents? Do we not want our children to grow up into a healthy society, and do we not want all children to grow up in such a society? If we consider all children to be a social tabula rasa - a pillar of innocence - then who are we to judge their fates?
Dr. Gary Kohls, a local physician in Duluth, once mentioned, during a conference on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a fascinating study being carried on at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology1. This study showed that children who grew up in loving households were far more likely to choose political positions of the left than were children who grew up in more impersonal households. Additionally, he mentioned that Sweden took such advice to heart and recently enacted a law to ban corporal punishment of children. This has resulted in a great propensity for such individuals to be compassionate and peaceful by social nature. Now, in Sweden, the polls are proclaiming a great rise in peacemakers and humanitarians!
These two examples show the effects of ensuring children a nurturing environment. People who develop under the care of such an environment are far more likely to become caring and compassionate citizens, pushing for a way of life that is not focused upon economic growth, but on a supportive community.
For this reason, I believe the community to be the most important factor in ensuring children an environment in which they shall grow up to become caring individuals. The community is focused upon checks and balances between citizens for equal representation and equal respect. With an entire community keeping a watchful eye over children, such children are far less likely to be raised within an abusive or impersonal household. They will always have people to turn to and trust within the community. Moreover, these children will be able to trust their teachers and receive the special attention they need during the years of schooling. For this reason, the community and the educational system are inseparable within a nurturing environment. The community is the educational system, and in turn, the educational system is the community.
In addressing the concerns of the educational system, we must understand the relationship education holds with other domains of society. In Kozol?s book, the problems he mentions are not problems with the educational system per se, but a problem with the social and economic forces dictating the children?s place within society. If nothing is done about the disparity of wealth between the haves and have-nots, the educators of Mott Haven will never be able to build the nurturing community that these children so desperately need.
“As a parting shot, I must remind you that the focus here must be labor, labor, labor!” were the words of Séamas Cain, a veteran anarcho-syndicalist, during a recent conversation of ours2. His statement had a certain echoing tone to it. As I considered his thoughts about social change, I began to see his point. Perhaps the labors of people are what are needed to focus their abilities towards the creation of a nurturing environment.
In Retrospect, the children of Mott Haven have been thrust into an inherently caustic environment because of financial barriers pushing them further into the inner city. Because of their position, these children have little chance to transcend the toils of the life given to them by the deterministic forces of the free market. This is so because their environment is mal-nurturing. They live nearby trash incinerators that are pumping plumes of smog into the air they breathe. Their mothers, trying to support them, must be away working or trying to find work. Many do not have fathers, and those who do may visit their fathers in prison. Some are even caught in a household of drug addiction or alcoholism. Some are abused regularly and must endure such abuses until they are able to escape from their own homes.
The mothers, fathers and children of these neighborhoods do not need to be covered in intellectualizing and dehumanizing labels. They do not need to be called “lazy,” “incapable,” or “stupid” - equated to genetic deformities by a prevailing attitude that remains frighteningly Social Darwinist. The people of Mott Haven are human beings and should be treated as such. They need to be given the support from the society that has, so far, trapped them inside an inescapable financial prison. They need help, and I cannot see why this society refuses to give such help.
Let us envision a world in which we do not dominate each other, but a world in which we are all created equal. Let us treat the people of such neighborhoods as human beings in whom their labors can be valued and expressed - in which the work they do shall benefit them and the community of which they are a part! These people need to be given the chance to build a nurturing environment themselves. And so, we should empower them with the ability to perform such a task. Therefore, I pose one last question; why cannot we empower people - all people - to labor toward a community in which their children?s needs are met?
We need a change of focus in which we will once again look to our neighbors and give them a helping hand. Once we ourselves have our needs met, we can then give what we have - however little or much - to help another human being. If we were to come together in the formation of a post-scarcity community, could we then mobilize against the socioeconomic forces that oppress so many children in the world? The idea behind a post-scarcity community is that of taking only what one needs, then focusing their full abilities towards giving unto others in such need.
I am speaking of a simple prospect, a task for you, at this very moment, to reflect upon what your needs are. If those needs have been met, then stand ready and willing to help others - whether they are friends or family, or mere acquaintances that cry out silently in need of another’s compassion. Over the past months I have been introduced to so many people desiring to make a difference. They have so much compassion bottled up within them, but never know how to express that compassion. There are so many things one could do to rekindle social bonds and address freedoms and necessities of those who suffer under the mechanics of an impersonal society. Such creativity and spontaneity is a beginning of a social dialectic to carry us onward to the fulfillment of our human potentialities: to see one?s eyes light up with thankfulness and to see them realize that they belong to something transcendently beautiful.
Retrieved 9/17/01.
http://www.d.umn.edu/~davi0840/html/essay.psychodynamic.html
Published: 6 years, 9 months ago
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