SOCIAL EQUALITY (OR ENGINEERING)



Peace,

First things First: How many newspapers do you read? If the answer is 0-1, step your game up for the good of yourself, your family, and your community. If that sounds extreme, look at it from this angle: business and political leaders read 5-6 papers a day (that includes international papers like the guardian, or bbc.com). Ideally, one should read papers from a liberal, moderate, and conservative slant in order to be aware of what's being discussed in a given day. I guarantee that you'll see things in some papers that you won't see in the others. If you don't know, how can you possibly teach? Access to information is one of the first ways that the haves are separated from the have-nots. Watching television is no substitute either, as that medium is suited for entertainment and not information. If you can, do the knowledge to www.blackelectorate.com (Peace, Brother Cedric!) or check out NPR (Stations vary according to the locale. If you don't do it for yourself, do it for your children who have to grow up in a world that you aren't really doing your best to stay abreast of.

Moving on to the subject of children, as a child, I attended a number of independent nursery and pre-schools. The schools were multicultural and very open. Later in life, I noticed that many of the people that I attended pre-school and elementary school with tended to be successful in their endeavors. I now recognize that a child's early education in an integral aspect of that child's development. The decisions that you make regarding their education can define their attitude towards education, their social networks, etc. Today they are select pre-schools in major cities that are actually rejecting kids, asking for admission essays, and charging up to $10,000 a year for 3 and 4 year olds! If someone is paying that much for finger paints, there's a bigger picture. In this case, where you go to pre-school influences where you go to elementary school, which affects where you go to middle school which affects ... you get the idea. You can't underestimate the impact of the socialization, networking, and access to resources that an environment like that can afford you.

On the other side, imagine the impact that underfunded head start programs have on children in Black, Brown, Yellow, Red, and poor White communities. Low quality early education programs tend to funnel our children into other low quality schools which seriously impact the earning potential and by extension, quality of life for many in our communities. If you don't dig where I'm coming from, go to the "hood school" in your city and see if the children there are being prepared to lead our community or country in the coming years. As globalization continues to entrench itself in all aspects of our life (more on that later), a two-tiered society is continuing to develop, where the haves and the never-hads are so far apart, you couldn't tell them that they were from the same country. Please take this seriously; it's one of the first aspects of social engineering (after unfair access to healthcare for expecting mothers,mind you), and creates an environment where the social equality of the poor and impoverished only reinforces the dysfunctional environment that they already see, whereas the social equality of the rich gives them perpetual access to more money, power, and respect internationally. Rich men usually marry rich women, and poor & uneducated men usually marry poor & uneducated women.

Here's a link to the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/03/education/03preschool.html?ex=1142139600&en=025e197284eadd0c&ei=5070&emc=eta1

Just because I don't like venting and not adding on, I'm going to end by giving some practical solutions to this:

1) Get your children into the best schools possible to increase their access to people, places, and things
2) Advocate for educational equity for the school in low income communities. If possible, volunteer your time and expertise to the schools so that the youth can see school as an community
3) Act with the goal of making sure that our children are balanced and skilled in a number of areas.

Please add on!

P.E.A.C.E.!!