Cradle to prison syndrome

My grandson has received his third incident of bad behavior. He has bit someone at least three times on different occasions. This would be disturbing to me, if I did not know that the majority of the children in his classroom is older than he. That the school careless places him in this situation because they do not have adequate staffing. I have never seen this behavior, by the way my grandson is just under 2.

That's right, my grandson has a rap sheet detailing his response to folks taking stuff from him. I definitely do not condone his biting nor do I condone inadequate staffing. You don't think this report is not going to follow him to kindergarten? As a criminal justice scholar, I find it appalling, that my grandson who is not yet 2 has a rap sheet. It may not be a rap sheet...

And for those who have studied the criminalization of young African-American males this should send chills through the whole body. I told my daughter nope, it does not feel right to place the child in the facility, but she wanted him to socialize...
So much for socializing, which brings me back to what I really wanted to blog about, I read that Fort Wayne NAACP president focus was on increasing memberships when someone pointed out the the low achievement scores of children, I "SMH".

African-American children have no time for established organization to grow its membership. These children are on, the late Dr. Rev. Marthin Luther King, Jr.'s "Why we can't wait ?" time table. And parents whom children live in poverty and are most at risk for this cradle to prison mentality can not afford NAACP membership. Nor can the NAACP afford to ignore these parents and their children who will end up in the educational system.

In the State of Indiana, the Children Defense Fund reported that over 267,000 children under 18 lived in poverty in 2006-2007. Those children between the age of 5-17 living in poverty comes to 15.8%. This would translate into 176,000 of the 1,149,024 school age children lived in poverty. Watch this, a little less than half (49%) of African-American children lived in poverty in Indiana !!

These children in 2007 attended schools in Indiana where 67% of students in the 4th grade are reading below their grade level. And if you just happen to be an African-American student 88% were reading below their grade level. And over 80% of these children perform below their grade level in math in the 4th grade. Alarming.

However, Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu warned us of this trend with his book,"Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys." The achievement gap if caught early is the time to intervene and assist those students who are having difficulty. It is in this group that young African-Americans find themselves making the transition to being dependent on his own way of figuring out things aside from his peers. These children, especially males will be soon recruited for their physical skills in sportsmanlike activities instead of speech debates or scientific projects involving reading and math skills.

So, in the words of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, Where do we go from here, Chaos or Community? Community is the answer when you go to the root of the problem instead of window dressing your organization for the masses. Education is not just in a schoolroom for our children it is the community support that will sustain them.


It appears that Dan Stockman has something to say about these young'uns and the nonsensical responses by organizations representatives who are to address this hot mess.