Neglecting Society's Vulnerable: The Curfew, Closed Pools and 4 Day School Week Continue America’s Blame Game

3CENTThere is something missing from this Port Richmond park for the middle of August. It is the sound of children playing and laughing. It is the sound of the lifeguard’s whistle. The onerous sounds of trucks are deafening being right next to 95 and the trolley screeches are piercing enough to forget the page you were reading, but the sounds of summer have already slipped into memory. A season associated with children and childhood memories has shuttered two weeks early. I wonder if there is something larger going on other than the sounds of silence when it comes to forgetting our obligation to America’s children.  

I should be grateful that the pools were open at all instead of complaining how the City Pools Closed Early. We remember the fiasco when the City shut the pools two years ago.  But sitting with the empty pool and only the sounds of commerce to fill this concrete park, I wonder where the children are. I wonder in all our willingness to compete globally and to insure economic stability for the city, have we abandoned our human mission to care and promote our children with happiness and opportunity? The pools should be open. The tennis court should be filled with youthful movement. The swings should be doing their purpose and the grass should not spend the day alone.

From this park bench I understand the Community Groups that are Upset with Curfew. Children are not the problem and when I wrote “Will a Real Curfew Work”, I viewed the issue from the standpoint of fear. We should be providing better opportunities for positive social interaction and from this empty park deep in the heart of the city, we are not. It is 11 in the morning and there are no children, no parents, and one wondering dog creating havoc on Richmond Street. As essential as providing safety for tourists and center city adults, the curfew is just a poor band-aid to stem the profuse bleeding of our children’s neglect and frustration. We have cut our programs down to the bare minimum. We have said it is the parents’ responsibility to provide positive activities and exercise. We have said our tax money is not worth our children’s happiness. We are wrong. We as a society must feel responsible for our children’s actions. They are not maniacs or violent thugs; they are just what we have created when we stop caring who they are, what they need, and the possibility they represent for our future.  

soelinThe final example of our neglect is the growing trend for Rural Schools to Choose 4-Day Week for Savings. The American public should be outraged with this proposal. This money saving option is going to take a day away from learning and positive interaction with educated and caring adults. The society and especially elected educational leaders are neglecting their duties to Americans because they are poor and happen to live in rural areas.

We will all lose if we cut school from five to four days, regardless of extending the time. It is one day less to be in a structured environment that requires societal norms of behavior, language, and learning as its foundation. We need to re-focus our efforts in spending our tax money on our most vulnerable, whether old or young, rural or urban, if we are to correct the societal ills created by greed and the widening economic class system.

Children will always stay home to play video games or watch television. Children will jump at the chance to stay home on Fridays, even if it means a couple of hours more each day. Children will eat junk food, fight, and write on walls if left alone during the day. In our American society, and every good and beneficial nation, we must provide a better day, a healthier way, an educational opportunity if they will reach their true potential. The American dream of reaching the heights of success from the nadir of poverty is still part of our social fabric. By closing the pools and summer programs, blaming all city children with a punishment of curfew, and by eliminating a day of school a week, we are essentially removing the ladder needed for our most vulnerable children to reach the American dream.