Already this year, Boston is poised to surpass 2005's ten-year high 75 homidices and last year's 74. The first victim this year was a 14-year-old boy leaving a party at six in the morning. His killing came just over a month after two girls, ages 14 and 15, and two boys, 16 and 17, were shot at three in the morning. In just a month’s time in March, an 11-year-old was arrested for bringing a gun to class, a 5-year-old was shot in the back of a car and both a 1-year-old and her 17-year-old father were shot as he cradled her in his arms. If the last two years have shown us anything, it's two things: 1.) you can't arrest and prosecute your way out of a youth violence problem and, 2.) our traditional responses to youth violence are not working as they used to.
This past December, with this in mind, I applied to Harvard's Graduate School of Education. I wanted to research classroom curriculums that might help stop the violence. I didn't get in. I want to hear what you think -- about my idea, whether you think Massachusetts should activate this powerful mandate, and about your ideas on how to stop the violence:
1. This fall, on a day when summer surged and convinced a city that colder days were the stuff of legend, I heard a crime being committed -- I was sure of it. Living off of Quincy Street in Dorchester, I had grown accustomed to the shouts and energy of the inner city. This was different: the profane screaming and swearing I heard meant something terrible was happening. I pulled my phone from my pocket and ran to the window. I was expecting to see a gun, a knife, an act of domestic violence in progress and everything else a frenetic mind could conjure. The aggrieved was a boy of eight I knew from the neighborhood. A group of observers watched the aggressor ride the bike that belonged to the eight-year-old from the scene as he writhed hysterically on the ground. “Why is everyone watching this?” I thought, as I started to dial the police. I thought it might be a robbery or a larceny or something along those lines, but the older boy looped back and returned the bike. After a moment of hesitation, I recognized him. The two were regular playmates. No crime had been committed -- no crime except that a group of bystanders, myself included, did nothing to stop a rage-purpled eight-year-old from mastering a grotesque repertoire of profanity at the top of his lungs on a street full of people.
This anecdote illustrates a problem that my experiences as an urban prosecutor, youth counselor, mentor and resident have made glaring. In Boston and cities across the country, young people are growing up in neighborhoods where troubled and broken families cannot compete with streets that hold powerful sway over impressionable minds. As alcohol, domestic violence, drugs, gang violence, guns and gnawing poverty exacerbate the failure of families, many young people teeter on a dangerous ledge. Surprisingly, there is a law on the books in Massachusetts with the power to rescue them, but instead of timely research and activation, the majority of taxpayer resources wait on the rocks below the precipice. This is why I resigned from the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office over a year ago and plunged headlong into youth violence prevention advocacy. It is why I tried to find my way into the Department of Education, Mass Insight Education, the mayor’s office, the governor’s office and many other policy circles. It is why, in the face of inertia that kept closing doors on a lowly prosecutor foraying into education reform, I sold nearly everything that I owned, moved to inner city Dorchester and decided to return to graduate study three years after I thought the bar exam was my last.
Five years ago, I wrote a policy paper discussing the relationship between character formation and juvenile crime in House Speaker Thomas Finneran’s Law and Public Policy course. A deeper commitment to the issue was forged when I received a high mark and words of encouragement from him. For my Juris Doctorate writing requirement, I continued to research the nexus between character education, crime and academic achievement. Along the way, I discovered that when John Adams wrote the Massachusetts Constitution, he required that public schools educate for character. In fact, he was so certain that character education engendered societal flourish he equated its importance with representative government.
In Commonwealth v. McDuffy, a landmark education reform case, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirmed Adams, quoting him, “Two things are to be indispensably adhered to,--one is, some regulation for securing forever an equitable choice of representatives; another is, the education of youth, both in literature and morals.” Other great minds concurred. In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois wrote, “The chief problem in any community cursed with crime is not the punishment of the criminals, but the preventing of the young from being trained to crime…It is the public schools, however, which can be made, outside the homes, the greatest means of training decent self-respecting citizens.” In Boston, where 15-yearolds are killing 19-year-olds headed off to college, 14 and 15-year-old girls are being shot at unsupervised house parties at three in the morning, and gang leaders that exchange weapons for peace are murdered, it is clear that families and schools are failing many.
2. My objectives for graduate study are to research whether a statewide mandate to educate for character is viable, and, if so, whether its implementation will help put younger generations of at-risk youth on the right track. With a 10-year high 75 homicides claiming mostly young people in Boston last year, and a similar toll this year, this research has never been more relevant. In families and neighborhoods where adults are struggling just to get by, young people headed for courtrooms, prison cells or worse often encounter little resistance -- a reality that current curriculum frameworks are not equipped to handle.
Thus far, my research for columns in the Boston Globe and Dorchester Reporter suggests that Adams was on target in mandating the instruction of humanity and general benevolence, concepts of justice where one treats others well in all circumstances, conscience, honesty, sincerity, good humor and generous sentiments, etc. In 2003, one year after implementing a humanities-based character education curriculum that incorporated many of Adams’s ideas, the Bristow Elementary School in the Bronx soared past 232 other schools in New York and ranked fourth in English Language Arts improvement. Similar programs at urban schools in Illinois, Nevada and other states produced remarkable achievement gains as well.
My research interests coincide with the existing research interests of many possible faculty mentors. Rick Weissbourd has been studying school reform initiatives and the moral development of urban youth in Boston. He and Robert Selman direct a project designed to enhance children’s ethical awareness -- a project highly and mutually relevant to the question of character education. Catherine Ayoub is leading research into prevention and intervention systems for at-risk youth experiencing child trauma. Our shared interest in at-risk youth in conjunction with her psychology background and research expertise points toward possible collaboration. Ellen Condliffe-Lagemann chaired the Department of Humanities at New York University and she is a national research leader; both points suggest a shared interest in humanities-based character education research. Fernando Reimers identifies policies that assist low-income students. Wendy Luttrell has explored race, worth and value. Mark Warren has studied racial equality and social justice. This extensive overlap of interests speaks to strong potential for one or more meaningful mentoring relationships.
3. The “Impact in the World” section on the HGSE website states that, “Education is the single most important ingredient for a successful society,” because it, “affords children and adults the opportunity to reach their potential as learners and thereby become productive, proud citizens.” My objectives share this vision. The aim of my research is to nurture the holistic formation of at-risk youth in order to reach them before it is too late -- before the dark cloud of CORI descends or worse.
I intend to conduct a careful analysis of the curriculums that might accomplish this, whether such curriculums will improve student proficiency, and whether they will create, as Adams intended, productive, proud citizens. Many issues related to this research -- closing achievement gaps, profligate criminal justice spending and rampant youth violence -- have captured recent headlines in publications ranging from the Boston Globe to the New York Times. Unique research designed to answer these prominent questions is a natural fit for the Education Policy, Leadership and Instructional Practice Concentration.
My research also fits with coursework at HGSE. Sylvia Epps teaches a Low- Income Children and Families course that examines public policy geared towards helping the poor. Hiro Yoshikawa's Risk and Resilience in Social Contexts course explores risk and intervention strategies. Even more relevant is his project examining intervention strategies that address student achievement in Boston. James Honan's Thinking and Acting Like an Education Reformer course is particularly relevant to my efforts. In addition to demonstrated fit at the HGSE, my research dovetails with coursework at the Kennedy School of Government: Anthony Braga’s Crime, Justice, and the American Legal System course and Father Brian Hehir’s Religion and Government: Choices of Morality, Law and Policy course, etc. Beyond that, the Safra Center for Ethics “encourages teaching and research about ethical issues in public and professional life.”
Finally, the mandate to educate for character is found in the Massachusetts Constitution. Implementation will require research in Massachusetts schools, advocacy in Massachusetts public policy and legislative circles, and if all else fails a lawsuit in Massachusetts courts. It is hard to imagine a more appropriate venue for the support of my research than the Graduate School of Education at Harvard -- the very “university at Cambridge” that Adams’s Constitution charged with protecting “wisdom, knowledge, as well as virtue.”
