I apologize for the late post, I promise that next week I will be posting on thursday. However, life got in the way of this post, so if this keeps happening, I may just change my scheduled days.
Back when I was growing up in the early nineties, I grew up in a suburb of St. Paul called Vadnais Heights. The town was small, small enough in fact, that the school district from White Bear Lake actually handled the education for our area. That's actually a lot of how the area was. Smaller towns that hadn't met the full force of development being engulfed by the expanding and developing town of White Bear Lake. Ironically enough, the same thing is happening in my current city of residence.
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| Manitou Station: White Bear Lake, MN |
Now, when you're in a small town, certain things go unnoticed. Crime is almost non-existent. The most that occurs is a traffic ticket or a high school party. Politics are as simple as whether or not you've sat down for lunch with the candidate. Things are relatively calm and easy going. But, as with anything, times change, as do the circumstances of people and even cities themselves.
Take Detroit for example. For the longest time, Detroit, Michigan had been one of the largest manufacturing cities in the United States. The city was great, not without it's own share of problems, but great. Then, after two recessions, decades of ineptitude and corruption, the city fell, becoming a shadow of its former self. Only recently has it started to pick up again. And because of this, regardless of how things are picking up in the city, it affected the suburbs greatly as well.
This brings me to the topic today, of how a lot of parents today have failed to live up to their most important job title:
'Parent'
The reason I say this is something that eerily caught my eye over the weekend. Saturday afternoon, I was eating my dinner in Taco Bell before work started, when an ambulance pulled into the parking lot. I saw them, but didn't think anything of it. One of the EMTs walked into the restaurant, started to order. It just wasn't a big deal to me.
Just after this, a young kid walked up to me, asking me a simple question, “Do you like ambulances?”
I was stunned for a second, looking around the room at who was in the restaurant. None of the tables had any toys on them, nor did he have any portable gaming system in his hand. That said to me that he wasn't the child of any of the workers in the restaurant. He looked like he was about seven years old, and the only people in the Taco Bell besides me were a young couple that looked about twenty.
I only could think of one thing at the time, 'This child is here all by himself. Where in the hell are his parents?' After getting over my perplexity, I replied with a quick, “Yeah, sure, why not?”, and the boy went on his way. He opened the door for an older lady as she walked in, and I didn't see him after that.
Now, my parents never had a lot of money, but they still found a way to raise me until I was old enough and responsible enough to make it under my own power to do certain things. When I was seven years old, whether or not I felt that I was ready to venture to public places like that on my own, my parents would never allow it. I only went when they went with me, no ifs, ands, or buts.
At that point, if I wanted to go to my friend's house down the street, my mother would still watch to make sure I was safe. When I wanted to go to the Wal-Mart that had just opened up after I turned eight, she wouldn't let me go up there without her driving me. Sure, the area wasn't bad with crime, but you cannot put a price or time commitment on the safety of your own flesh and blood.
So, with this knowledge in hand of my own childhood, I could only question why this seven year old was here, all by himself. I was in a public place, right on the border of two cities, one of which is pretty bad given the area, and this child had no parents with him or supervision. It shocked me.
The fact remains that, given the current situation that we have in our society, I think that parents just have lost the time to think about what it truly means to be a parent. It's more than just putting a roof over our heads and food in our bellies. It's about giving children structure, about taking care of them, about showing them what they need to do to excel at what they want to do once they grow and mature.
But when you look around at a lot of places, it seems that this simple message has been forgotten. It becomes very apparent when you take a quick drive around the city in which I work, Ypsilanti, Michigan.
The city, like Detroit, was a thriving factory town. It had three different auto plants at one point. However, one of these has been closed, and another working at only 45% capacity in order to cut labor costs.
Because of this, the city is struggling. Many small businesses outside of the downtown area have been abandoned, burned out, or left fledging in out of date buildings that cannot make a safety inspection. Job opportunity is scarce in a place that is unable to afford even some of the most basic things. Crime has taken a major toll on the city, and a large portion of the city north of Highway 94 has become somewhat of a slum.
On top of that, the graduation rate for students in the Ypsilanti school district is 66.8% in 2007. This came with 26.7% Dropout Rate, leaving a full 6.5% unaccounted for. This means that at least one in four students in the city won't even graduate high school. Now, where do we place the blame for this?
Do we place it with the parents, who don't give the child structure and nurturing? Who let their child run free when they're younger so they have no control. Or can't face the fact that they have two jobs and let the child run their own lives except for finding adequate care for their child. Or do we blame the teachers, who are underpaid for their job so they just stop caring about what happens?
However, blame could also be placed on the child themselves, for not wanting to try and learn what the schools are teaching them. This is a three sided issue, one with various political motivations and gets down deeply into what it means to actually make a living in this world.
I remember one day when I was getting home from elementary school. My mother wasn't able to pick me up, so I had to ride the bus home. When I got off the bus, my neighbor from across the street picked me up right from the bus stop with a note signed by my mother. But these days, that doesn't happen. Kids come home and no parent is around because they have to work constantly to give them a roof over their head and food on the table.
Those type of parents at least take a bit of responsibility for their child, at least giving them a home. My guess is that in the end, these parents feel that there is no way out of their circumstances, and believe that the people around them are in the same predicament. In some cases, that's not entirely wrong. But there is always someone around, someone who could be willing to take care of a child for a couple of hours for a parent to get home. There are always options.
However, we all know of the other side. The parent that has no job, but something that keeps them home. Whether it is drugs or alcohol or some other type of debilitation, they are stuck with either very little money, hope, or care. The fact that most addicts refuse or are unable to give up their addiction for their family is a sad reality, but one that can be corrected by a community of help.
In the end, when we are children, it is our parents that we truly look up to. Whether we say that our hero is an athlete, a movie star, a politician, or fictional character, our true hero is our parents. When we're young, we look to them for guidance and support. They're the ones who tell us to listen and trust in authority, to give us strength when people in our classrooms are against us. With them, things like gang violence, school shootings, drug problems, they don't happen in our schools.
It is a team effort, requiring a combination of parents, teachers, school councilors, neighbors, friends, family, police officers and elected officials, all working at different levels. But if everyone puts in effort in the community, then our children and our cities will become better places to live. As they say, it takes a village to raise a child. Because everything starts at the home, and it ends with the home as well.
Sources:
http://www.emich.edu/public/geo/Ypsilantiindicators/highschoolcompletion.html
http://www.twincitiesrestaurantblog.com/tcrb/2010/03/manitou-station-white-bear-lake-mn-2.html
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