A Glock 23 .40 cal semi-auto. The same caliber that struck Vada Vasquez
Carvett Gentle's name has been plastered across news feeds in all forms of media in the 5 boroughs for the past three days. Almost assuredly, when the gun fell into his hands in an improvised version of hot potato, it never occurred to him that this sort of fame might be what followed. Perhaps a few mentions amongst the group of known gang affiliates that started the game, perhaps a few uneasy stares by locals who might've heard the story of how he'd retaliated for what is now recognized as a fight that originated inside Riker's Island fences, but never his disheartened face, arms and legs shackled as he was led from the precinct, ungracefully occupying majority shares of websites, newspapers, and television news programs. The most interesting thing about this story is the fact that, in a cursory search of outerlying news institutions, this story is difficult to find unless you're looking directly at a site like News 12, the NY Daily News, or NY1. To its credit, the NY Times carried front page coverage of the incident on the following day, but has since moved the story into the NY Region section and, unless you're specifically looking for it, it's not at the top of the list. So, why create a fuss? The reason is simple: I don't see Arne Duncan anywhere in the vicinity of my neighborhood, that's why.
In the admittedly shell shock inducing aftermath of the Derrien Albert incident, the federal government was quick to swoop in, make a dramatic show of supporting the environment and making an analysis of the system (one in which, until the advent of the Obama administration, Duncan was at the head) that had allowed such violence to occur, and suggest pathways towards influencing an evolution in behavior. However, the fact that one Bronx teen took two non-fatal hits to the body, and one is only recently showing signs of improvement after being in a medically induced coma after emergency surgical intervention to remove bullet fragments from her brain doesn't warrant similar treatment. This is ponderous - the situations are very nearly the same: there has been a rash of teen related violence and deaths in the NYC schools this year, troubling moreso than normal because of Bloomberg's well documented claims during the debacle that was the mayoral race that 'our schools are safer'.
Despite the fact that this most recent despairing incident took place on the street an incredibly short distance from the front of a school building, the underlying reality is irrefutable - that the reason these two students were wounded had to do with unoccupied, unsupervised, poor decision making adolescents with nothing more constructive to be doing with their time. Department of Education officials, still suffering in epileptic fits over the need to keep in step with the requirements of the standardized testing craze while drowning under the weight of overcrowded classrooms and no prospective budget increases to hire more teachers are finding themselves confronted with having to pick up the pieces following this type of senseless outbreak of gunfire. In an article published in one local newspaper recently, a resident living in the area where Vada Vasquez took a bullet to the head lamented: "Nowadays, there is no parental guidance - kids are raising kids. Now parents are trying to pay their bills and they're working. Before, they were on welfare and were at home when the kids got home." All of which points up two crucial realities:
1) The NCLB instilled testing insanity has clearly run its course. We have an entire decade of students that cannot draw parallels, or even non-parallels for that matter, they don't see connections between subject areas, and can't comprehend how things like learning a foreign language - and by extension key items about the culture that speaks it, will in turn improve their own native language abilities. Furthermore, if a prescripted format keyword/phrase-laden five paragraph essay is the extent of available products extractable from the current student population, no wonder there is a measure of diminishment in their vocabulary since so much of their lexicography is taken up by terminology specifically keyed towards successfully authoring one of the above. The only rectification for this brings me to point number 2:
2.) Let's say for example, we follow the advice of organizations like the NEA, the UFT, and a host of other educational entities, and begin instituting after school programs, reviving after school (visual, performance, music) arts programs, sports teams, giving students more options for internships, public service, and hands-on training, and imbuing their daily schedule with the possibility to do something else to do besides play hot potato with a gun, what might the end result be? Certainly Vada Vasquez would have an opinion on the matter. Where would the money come from? Well, quite simply the crush of funding currently slated for high stakes, dyspepsia inducing testing currently being foisted on the youth of our fair city.
There is, to be sure, another option: allow the situation to continue, and not have students monitored and productive during those times. Which, given the overt outcry of comfort and support given to the families of the victims during these sorts of criminal outrages, is not one with which residents are comfortable. However, either society in this country as a whole must accept the basic truth that violence for the sake of violence is going to continue to be a basic concept force-fed according to a hidden curriculum to the youth during their compulsory education, in the same vein as - for example - English class, and accept the moral implications of what that means, or a paradigmatic shift is required. And it is required right now.
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