(no subject)
Week four of teaching at my new school. [Previous postings re: my new job are friends-only.]
This week alone, I physically intervened in three fights between students in my class.
Which is two more than I saw in my entire three years at my former school.
When I took the position in June, I believed that a school in a low-income neighborhood would give the neighborhood kids more of a sense of community and belonging toward the school. But I'm starting to wonder if it's a lost cause entirely, given the viscious cycle of the subculture. This article from today's New York Times about crime statistics in NYC hits the nail on the head. This may be Times-member-only, so here's the excerpted crux of it:
Of those arrested on charges of murder so far this year, about 14 percent were under 18, nearly double the city’s average, 8 percent, for the past three years.
Juvenile arrests for murder and other major felonies increased to 4,842 in this fiscal year from 4,352 in the past one. That is an increase of 11.3 percent, whereas since at least 2002 there have been annual increases no greater than 2.1 percent, according to a city report released this month.
Criminologists attribute the spurt in youth crime in some places to what they call an evolving subculture among juveniles and young adults that encourages violent responses to seemingly trivial disputes.
“What everybody sees is street rules saying if you’re dissed you have to do something,” said David M. Kennedy, the director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “And what counts as being dissed is getting more and more minor.”
Educated people may find gangster hoodlum posturing humorous and worthy of ironic humor, but this for REAL. God help us.
This week alone, I physically intervened in three fights between students in my class.
Which is two more than I saw in my entire three years at my former school.
When I took the position in June, I believed that a school in a low-income neighborhood would give the neighborhood kids more of a sense of community and belonging toward the school. But I'm starting to wonder if it's a lost cause entirely, given the viscious cycle of the subculture. This article from today's New York Times about crime statistics in NYC hits the nail on the head. This may be Times-member-only, so here's the excerpted crux of it:
Of those arrested on charges of murder so far this year, about 14 percent were under 18, nearly double the city’s average, 8 percent, for the past three years.
Juvenile arrests for murder and other major felonies increased to 4,842 in this fiscal year from 4,352 in the past one. That is an increase of 11.3 percent, whereas since at least 2002 there have been annual increases no greater than 2.1 percent, according to a city report released this month.
Criminologists attribute the spurt in youth crime in some places to what they call an evolving subculture among juveniles and young adults that encourages violent responses to seemingly trivial disputes.
“What everybody sees is street rules saying if you’re dissed you have to do something,” said David M. Kennedy, the director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “And what counts as being dissed is getting more and more minor.”
Educated people may find gangster hoodlum posturing humorous and worthy of ironic humor, but this for REAL. God help us.