Today...I almost gave up.

"The reason that we have consistently had underperformance among our children is because too many of us think it is acceptable for them not to achieve. And we have to have a mindset where we say to ourselves, every single child can learn if they're given the resources and the opportunities. And right now that's not happening."

-Barack Obama at the 2007 Democratic Primary Debate at Howard University

"I'm going to insist that we've got decent funding, enough teachers, and computers in the classroom, but unless you turn off the television set and get over a certain anti-intellectualism that I think pervades some low-income communities, our children are not going to achieve. "

-Barack Obama on NBC's Meet The Press July 25, 2004

"“If you are planning for a year, plant rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people.”

-Chinese Proverb
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I'm sitting behind a desk in a classroom full of high school seniors. I am praying that they make it beyond their chosen stations in life. I say chosen because they are obviously brighter than their conversations indicate. Rims, shoes, and any rapper with "lil" in his name pervade their conversations. I hear talks of babydaddies, bad mommas, and mments of conscious indiscretion. Profanity flows from their lips like rivers of bile.

This is our future...

The children here are undisciplined and it's not their fault, to a point. At this school, tardies are unheard of. The bell rings and there are 1,000+ students still wandering the hallways as though they have nowhere to be, nowhere to go.

Class is merely a place to socialize. The club being more important than Calculus. The new Jordans are more important than George Washington.

Fights get discussed more than football games. Consequences are few. Crackdowns aren't forthcoming. It just doesn't "look good," they say, to have a bunch of write-ups coming out of your school.

These kids are being miseducated at a political cost. The principal is fighting and so many others are apathetic, or ignorant, towards the problems. Kids cannot learn if they are living the "Freakonomics" of failure.

At this school 60% of the children read AT or BELOW a 5th grade level.

Over HALF of the school is on free or reduced lunch.

AND they have all but given up hope...

They have relegated themselves to being illiterate, impoverished, and for the most part uneducated.

They don't want to learn, they just want to live.

The only problem is, we're not giving them a chance for survival.

Without some of the fundamental skills that are imparted upon students during their formative high school years.

I truly do NOT understand how some teachers do it....fight for these students with little to no support.

It's honestly on the verge of breaking me.

How could we have possibly screwed up so bad that the concept of en loco parentis no longer applies in the schools.

Maybe it's too many teachers only around because they get summers off...

Maybe it's too many administrators without clear educational aspirations for the pupils...

Maybe it's administrators refusing to discipline in favor of friendship...

Maybe it's just me...