These words, spoken just above a whisper by 17-year old Percy Harris of Crane Tech High School on Chicago’s West Side, reflect the kind of bravado out of all proportion to our “ killing fields” on Afghanistan’s Main Streets, U.S.A., routine environment for 116,000 students.

In his splendid, but heart-breaking article beginning on page l, Chicago Tribune, October 16, complete with photograph of laughing high school students, reporter, Azam Ahmed, follows five students on their morning trip to school, where fear of bullets threatens hope for a safe journey.

Chicago’s Public School’s security chief, Michael Shields, said, “These young people have been through more than we can imagine by the time they enter high school.”

How ironic, after having spent millions trying to assure the Olympic Committee that Chicago would be a splendid choice for the Olympics, that today’s paper (October 17) tells us in an article, again by Azam Ahmed, that budget cuts will leave 40,000 Chicago children out of the summer tutoring program, leaving our killing fields safe for the gangs to pursue their reign of terror.

“Safe passage is one of the most pressing issues we face,” said Peggy Cordellis-Byrd, principal of TEAM Englewood High School. “It seems like an impossible thing for a principal to have control over.

We can only go so far outside of school. It’s not like it isn’t my problem, because it is,” she said. “But it’s also a community problem.”

And the only way it will ever become a community problem is if we stop to listen to those who have written for us, such as another Tribune writer, Kristen Mack, in her article, titled, “Teens Always on Guard.”

Johnathan Harvey, l6, an Englewood junior at Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men, navigates two worlds, Mack tells us, at Chicago’s only public all-boys high school.

People tell him he is an exceptional, strong, beautiful black man. In his neighborhood, he does his best to blend in, acting one way in school, another around the neighborhood.

Some of the problems arise from the fact that a number of the students from his block have classes in the same building, on 63rd street and Stewart Avenue, but attend a different school, TEAM Englewood Community Academy, with a different culture.

Now, even I with no association with either school, could have foreseen that a group of students singled out for the fast tract would also be the object of jealousy and physical abuse from those less favored. Wouldn’t it have been worth the time and finances to have planned the physical plant and programs in a way to have lessened the problems?

Last June, students pulled all the fire alarms to empty the building for a school-on-school scuffle. No one was seriously hurt, but there was certainly the possibility for real harm.

The youngsters have various ways of avoiding trouble on the way to school: Avoid eye contact. Walk fast, but not too fast, you don’t want anyone to think you’re scared. Keep one hand free, so you can swing back if someone hits you. Above all, keep your mean mug on. Mack tells us, “Violence is nothing a teenager should ever get used to.”

In reply to Ahmed’s report of 40,000 teens dropped from the summer tutoring program, we should be asking: Do we not have sufficiently educated and motivated adults to organize a tutoring program for those youngsters who will be cut from the summer program? We have the time. Do we have the will? Do we care? What messages are we sending our children?

The question we want to ask ourselves is: What do we envision for their future? Our children’s future? All are our children.

To be continued

Home

Archives