In a city filled with blight from corner to corner and neighborhood to neighborhood, there still remains one heartbreaking statistic that flies under the radar. Only 20 percent of black males in Detroit Public Schools are graduating from high school. We have big name politicians running for mayor and none have commented on this alarming percentage. No one has any answers as to how this happened.
I will tell you how it happened. It started a long time ago and we are now experiencing the ripple effect.
It didn’t start at the school where teachers failed to educate while they may be partly to blame, they do not deserve the lion’s share. This started when parents stopped caring about their children. Parents stopped caring whether their kids were in school or in the streets. Parents stopped attending parent-teacher conferences and parent organization meetings.
Why?
Because it interfered with their lives and what they had going on. You see, mama and daddy can’t be at the casino and at a parent-teacher conference at the same time.
Unfortunately, the role and burden of parenting got too heavy for the parent carrying it. Parents stopped giving a damn about their kids and the school system has too.
For all the hard work that some teachers, coaches, counselors and principals put in daily — encouraging students and counseling them on the importance of success — it is all for naught once the children go back to their community.
Our males are not succeeding because there are no men in the community or the household who care enough to get involved. Boys often grow up with no male discipline, direction or teaching and so they choose the path of least resistance.
Males look around their neighborhood and see despair from block to block. They don’t see any positive role models, instead they see dope boys and imitators of Fifty Cent and Lil’ Wayne. When there is no father at home to instill discipline, work ethic and a positive identity in young men, they turn to something else for answers, and oftentimes, it’s the streets and a life of crime.
What’s even worse is that out of those that graduate from high school, few attend college, and a fraction of those complete it. If you live in Detroit, most of the time you can go into a neighborhood and find people who have attended Wayne State University at some point.
Very few times will you hear them say they graduated.
How can we turn this around?
MEN.
Men have to step up. Men have to become the leaders in the household and community that they once were. Let’s stop expecting DPS and WSU to teach males everything they need to know for life.
Men have to step their game up. Women have carried the weight long enough.
I remember a line from the 90s movie “Boyz ‘n The Hood” where Laurence Fishburne, who played the father of Cuba Gooding Jr., tells his son’s mother that she can’t teach him how to be a man.
Our communities are lacking men that will step up and teach boys how to be men; men that will teach their sons the importance of education and hard work. The school can’t do it; schools need to focus on education.
I guarantee that if men got more involved in the lives of other young men, those statistics would improve. Men have to take back control.
3 comments
For the Wayne State University newspaper to reveal that only 20 percent of black males in Detroit graduate from high school is a frightening statistic. It appears that Detroit public officials have not commented on this statistic because it is so heartbreaking. Most parents seem to be indifferent about this situation. Perhaps one way to resolve this problem would be to have a meeting of teenage boys, high school counselors, and public officials every Saturday -- or the first Saturday of each month -- to discuss and implement ways to end this predicament!