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When all is said and done, when we have increased literacy achievement and shifted teaching practice in our most challenging schools, the hard reality of poverty remains to erode the aspirations of thousands of children. Occasionally I read a book that touches me with a moral energy that shatters my defenses and touches my heart. Alex Kotlowitz's There are No Children Here is such a book. It is, in the words of its subtitle "The story of two boys growing up in the other America." The boys, Lafayette and Pharoah Rivers, grew up in the Henry Horner homes, a stretch of public housing in Chicago where drugs, crime, violence and death are routine. Can you imagine a childhood where daily existence includes diving for cover to avoid random bursts of gun fire. Kotlowitz, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal suggested to their mother, LaJoie that he wished to write a book about her sons and the other children of Chicago's blighted poor. Agreeable but hesitant, she said, "But you know there are no children here. They've seen too much to ever be children." When Mrs. Rivers arrived at the new Henry Horner housing project in 1956, her family considered it a step up. "When I got my apartment, I thought this was what life was meant to be. I never looked any further than here. The grass was greener, we had light poles, and little yellow flowers. We had it all." In 1995, she was struggling to feed eight children on $542 a month in food stamps. Cornerstone allows me to spend some of my time thinking about what education can do to change the destiny of poor and otherwise disadvantaged children. I've learned that before people will consider solutions they need a shared understanding of the problem. Through Alex Kotlowitz's eyes, we come to understand something about living in the midst of concentrated poverty, something about families who live outside the so-called American dream. Nearly half the families in the Henry Horner homes have no access to phones. Lafayette explains that the only way to keep from getting involved with gangs is "to make as little friends as possible." Lafayette and Pharoah wonder if they will even grow up at all. "Momma I'm real tired," said Lafayette. "Anytime I go out I ain't guaranteed to come back." For the Rivers, the neighborhood is a black hole...no parks, no banks, no libraries, movie theaters, skating rinks or bowling alleys. The one neighborhood health clinic closed in 1990. The dreaded basements of these apartments are a jumble of animal carcasses, human excrement, and broken kitchen appliances. In the River's apartment, a stream of hot water flows day and night from the tub. The faucet is broken. Sewage is backed up in the kitchen sink. The housing authority facing a perennial budget shortfall fixes nothing. Drug abuse is rampant. There is not a single drug treatment program immediately available. The housing project is home to 6,000 families who are served by three social service agencies. The three oldest of Mrs. River's children, to whom she believes she has given everything she could, have dropped out of school and are in jail. She lives in daily fear that her younger ones won't survive. In 1989 she began paying $80 per month for burial insurance for her ten and eight year old sons, her four year old triplets, and herself. While my experience with this book left me with a sense of unbearable sadness, the Rivers family never succumbs to despair. Pharoah works desperately to win the spelling bee despite a profound stutter. Amidst the destruction around them, the children yearn for normal pleasures: shooting marbles, going to McDonalds, meeting Oprah. Kotlowitz believes, and I only hope that he is correct, that people like us will respond when we truly understand what life is like at the bottom, where families are consigned to conditions that make it almost impossible for children to grow up whole. The Rivers are folks who live in overwhelmingly bleak circumstances yet possess a tenacity of spirit. The challenge for us is to connect---to do what it takes to be a neighbor, a mentor, a coach, a kindred spirit. Lafayette, Pharoah, and their friends are not children in our sense of the word, full of innocence, wonder, and hope. Our gift to them is the expectation that children or not, they can, they must, they will! |
