Rodney D. Coates
Professor of Sociology/Gerontology and Black World Studies
Miami University (contact: [log in to unmask])

Another year begins, and much like the fall leaves, we look at your
young students and assess the harvest and contemplate the future.  All
too often, when the harvest has to do with black and other children of
color, we bemoan the fact that it seems to get smaller and smaller - as
gang violence, drug addiction, teen pregnancy and sexuality, drop outs,
lack of motivation, inadequate parental involvement, insufficient
teacher and counseling intervention strategies, poor resources and
educational opportunities, failing schools and complacent communities,
lackadaisical attitudes on the part of adults as student failures
skyrocket, academic mediocrity, and below average performance appear to
be the norm.  While the culprits are many, while much finger pointing
and blame exist to fill volumes, no whole libraries -as indeed has been
the case for over 50 years - we have yet to identify a set of things
that will change the situation.
If indeed it takes a whole village to raise a child, and if indeed the
society must bear responsibility for what appears to be structural
failures, we must nevertheless acknowledge that we (that is you and I)
bear some collective and individual responsibility to change the system.
 While some have argued that the system is hopelessly lost and call for
such remedies as home schooling, voucher systems, or private schooling -
these are not available for most students in public schools.  And while
we still encourage alternatives, we must find ways to make public
schools more responsive to the needs of 'our' kids.  It is toward this
response that this editorial is directed.
I believe that at the heart of our kids failure is the mixed messages
they receive from us the adults that are supposed to be their models. 
These mixed messages simply put says that they are not worth our
concern, our resources, and our time.  You might ask how I could come to
such an absurd conclusion.  Well consider -each year as students meet
teachers a battle takes place outside of the schools while we grumble
over how and how much we are going to fund education.  As always, those
parents with kids and their teachers are frantically trying to make
every penny work double, while finding new and more novel ways to teach
and education.  And as always, there are those group of citizens with no
kids - that complain that there are more pressing priorities for their
money then increased taxes for schools.  We therefore find that schools
and school expenditures takes a back seat to such things as roads,
prisons, and pensions. Unfortunately, such short sightedness means that
a future generation of citizens will have few resources or jobs that
would allow them the luxury to buy cars and ride the roads, and more
likely will populate the prisons, and their lack of employment will mean
less for us to retire upon.
Secondly, the mixed messages we send are that education, or this form
of education is of little or no value.  There are those in the black
community, singing the victim song, which would deny this generation a
chance by selling the lie that its 'white man's' education and
they need to be black informed, black identifying, and black centered. 
Therefore, a new type of racism (this one from within) threatens to
destroy the only hope many urban, minority kids will ever have.  What
many do not seem to get is that multiplication, spelling, and biology
are not white or black, but universally needed to survive.  When
hip-hop, pseudo-scientific bias, racism (in Afro-centric garb) sells
such messages it is our kids that loose.
Thirdly, we send mixed messages to our kids when we allow them to
accept failure or we accept their failure as either reason to complain
about racism, or as the fact of our collective experience.  Such
messages can only produce more failure, and more suffering as another
generation does not rise to their full potential. 
Therefore, rather then point the figure to this devil or that evil; let
us remember that the future still belongs to those who prepare now. 
Whether one sends their kids to private schools, or home schools or
public schools; whether or not these are Afro-centric, or student
centered we must provide consistent messages to our youth if they are to
see improvements, and if we are to halt the decline in achievement.  The
messages we need to send are quite simple:
1)	Failure is not an option
2)	Learning, knowledge and wisdom acquisition is good
3)	Success is the only way to defeat generations of failure
4)	The only real barrier to success is self.