fist, stick, knife, gun

I am currently reading fist, stick, knife, gun by Geoffrey Canada, the famous founder of the Harlem Children's Zone. HCZ has been the news a lot lately, especially in the past few weeks after having apparently received accolades in the film Waiting for Superman. The book does not focus on HCC but rather is a personal history of Canada's experience with violence as a child and in his work as an educator.

I have only completed about half of the book, so this is not meant to be a review per se, the just my first gut reaction to the contents of the work.

It is sad.

Having recently become a mother, I think I am even more sensitive than usual to stories or instances in which the innocence of children is corrupted. To be witness to the purity, trust and utter vulnerability of a baby; to feel the responsibility of protecting a child from the sometimes ugliness of the world - they even talk about this in baby books - makes it seem so much sadder that there are people out there who would harm other people. Canada speaks of his mother in the early part of the book, but describes how as a young man in a tough neighborhood one must very early on turn to his peers for acceptance and guidance.

I, like most Americans, everywhere of the violence that occurs particularly in the inner-city. I, like many "middle-class" African-Americans, have ambiguous feelings about the great extent to which the children involved in and subjected to violence are minorities. in my reflections on educational reform, I am often tempted to push aside the issue of violence. in I feel as though I don't understand people who wants to harm other people; I just don't want to deal with it. I don't think that schools are really the place to deal with these issues; they are issues that society as a whole must resolve. yet society is not dealing with them, so the institutions that are the sites for violence are left to contend with them when they are not necessarily equipped to do so.

This is what appeals to me about the Harlem children's zone - the attempt to holistically address the culture that creates violence and low academic achievement. I am curious to see where fist stick knife gun ends up - the distance left to be covered between the reflection and the creation of HCZ.