Looking for Hope for Inner-city Youth

One of the writing projects I have in my “semi-active” file is a young adult novel set in Baltimore.

Recent events there have dragged it to the forefront of my mind.

For several years, I taught special education in Baltimore City public schools. One of my assignments was

The school was the nicest building
in the neighborhood.

teaching life skills to developmentally and emotionally disturbed fifth graders. The school building was almost a stereotype—a three story red brick building rising in a desolate neighborhood of decrepit town houses and crumbling apartment buildings.

We took frequent field trips. Some of them were to places like the Inner Harbor, but most were to neighborhood resources, like Mondawmin Mall and the local library. We used public transportation, since we were trying to equip our students to navigate their world.

The area was devastated in the recent rioting.

When I think about what those kids had to deal with, I can see how despair develops. So few of them had living situations we would call reasonable. One girl lived with her great-great grandmother. Another slept in a closet she could lock from the inside to keep away from her father’s friends, who were often drunk or high. One foster parent told me she wasn’t really interested in anything we had to tell her, since she was intending to “send back” the foster child as soon as her car loan was paid off.

Much of the housing is abandoned
or substandard.

Very discouraging were our discussions of preparing for the future.

The self-esteem movement was in full swing at the time, and the way it was being applied at our school emphasized how wonderful and unique and entitled each child was, with awards and ceremonies and cheerleading, but little or no effort to show them how to earn any self-esteem. We were not permitted to try to add a dash of reality—if a child with an IQ of 65 announced he wanted to be an architect, we were to support that, instead of investigating more appropriate possibilities. Many of the boys planned to be professional athletes. No one told them how the odds were stacked against them.

No thought that respect was to be earned.

So much of what the kids felt they should have, but didn’t, was drawn from TV. They simply did not believe that most people don’t live in luxurious single family mansions, expensively furnished and with several high-priced cars in the garage. They just knew they didn’t have that, saw no way to get it, and were frustrated and angry at being denied what they thought everyone else got easily.

Some of the life skill discussions came to a dead end because they didn’t understand how things operate. They didn’t realize that most people worked for their money—indeed, they saw little correlation between work and money—and thought credit cards entitled people to get things without paying money for them. 

Several small stores were opened in the neighborhood by Asian immigrants. My fellow teachers were sure that “the government” financed their startups, refusing to believe in the self-help coops the groups had formed, where they would all work to finance a tiny grocery store, then move on to a dry cleaners. Of course, the teachers spread this misinformation to the students, who then felt even more deprived.

Probably the saddest conversations, though, centered around what the students might do in the future. So many of them—especially the boys—spoke in terms of “If I grow up…” rather than “When I grow up…”

Every week brought news of another young man killed by gunfire, overdose or accident.

I continued to teach special education to the same type of students when I transferred out of the city, but in high school. The students had many of the same challenges, but they were not as immersed in the self-esteem models, and they realized they could have a future if they would work for it. A big part of my job was job preparation and placement in the last year or two of high school. As soon as he turned 18, one kid went to work as a paid intern on an HVAC crew. He proudly brought in his first paycheck, and he was on track to earn more than I did that year. Another, who had social interaction problems, got a position pulling parts in a salvage yard, where he didn’t have to deal with the public. One girl, a mother at age sixteen, got a private grant to go to cosmetology school. She was determined to translate that opportunity into a future for herself and her child.

I don’t know if there is a solution, or if there is, what it might be, for our angry, despairing inner city youth.

But I do know that young people who don’t see how they can succeed will end up being perfect examples of self-fulfilling prophesies.

My young adult novel may be too depressing to finish. Or to market if I ever do.

Do you have any ideas for how to address the situation?

KM Rockwood