HIS AND HER WHAT?!

Few would disagree that men and women are fundamentally different in many ways and for centuries it has caused a great deal of pain and suffering for both genders. Everything from the subservience of women to women’s liberation failed to adequately address our disparities. Today, however, we are finally finding more constructive ways of dealing with it.

Much of the contemporary solution comes in the form of voluntary and equitable separation. We now have his and her cars, bathrooms, even bedrooms and cable networks, all in an effort to facilitate good will by keeping us apart in areas where irreconcilable conflicts often arose. If we just carry this social experiment a step further we could make great strides in solving the congestion on our roads, especially our highways. Here, unbeknownst to some, the battle of the sexes rages on every day largely contributing to the traffic we all experience.

Men are more aggressive by nature and love their machines. For many, a powerful and fast motor vehicle is a steroid-like boost, a natural extension of their physical prowess. Consequently, they tend to see driving as an attribute and put a great deal of thought into it. The time it takes to drive from one point to another is a measuring stick of their worthiness and a source of pride.

Women on the other hand are usually far less aggressive and more uncomfortable with powerful machines. They tend to be cautious, some might say skittish, behind the wheel, especially at high speeds with towering 16 wheelers sharing the road. They put as much thought into driving as they do walking and breathing. It’s simply not a topic that warrants much attention. And shaving a couple of minutes off a trip is meaningless.

The way men and women commonly hold a steering wheel illustrates some of these fundamental differences. Women typically hold the wheel with both hands, usually in the traditional 10 and 2 o’clock positions, suggesting a cautious, defensive-driving approach, and I might add, a method recommended by motor vehicle departments across the country. Conversely, men more often than not, use one hand conveying a nonchalant, confident manner.

The volatile mixture of genders and their polar driving behaviors can trigger an escalating chain of events on the highway that often culminates with bumper-to-bumper traffic. An aggressive male can make a cautious female more tentative, and conversely a tentative female can make a male driver more aggressive. It doesn’t much matter which comes first. Like nuclear fission, once it starts it’s difficult to stop.

This is by no means an indictment of either sex. The purpose is only to demonstrate we are different and these differences contribute greatly to traffic congestion.

Now imagine for a moment that there were his and her highways. Of course, this can’t be implemented everywhere, at least not without spending a great deal of money, but our tri-state area is perfectly suited for this unorthodox social experiment.

Take for example the New Jersey Turnpike. For a long stretch, the highway divides in both north and southbound directions, one side for cars and trucks, and the other exclusively for cars. Why not make one side for male drivers and trucks, and the other for women? Separating women and trucks is an added bonus since the former tends to get especially uncomfortable among big rigs.

The same approach could be applied to parallel highways like the Merritt and Hutchinson River Parkways which run close to Interstate 95. Give the Merritt and the Hutch to the women, and 95 to the men and truck drivers.

Long Island highways are also ideal. For instance, the Cross Island Parkway and Clearview Expressway, the Long Island Expressway and Northern State Parkway, and the Meadowbrook and Wantagh Parkways. All three pairs run parallel and close to one another.

Pride of ownership and healthy competition could soon develop encouraging better driving on everyone’s part. At the very least, the traffic patterns on our respective highways might help settle once and for all who is the better driver.

Granted, it’s a wild idea, but all things considered, it would be heaven for both sexes. No harm in dreaming.

ASSESSING THE BABY BOOMER LEGACY

My generation, the baby boomers, are arguably the most celebrated generation in American history. Time Magazine named us Person of the Year in 1966. As youths we fostered peace, love and understanding principally by helping to end the Vietnam War, and we played an influential role in the civil rights and environmental movements. But, did we live up to the high ideals we preached in the four decades since then?

As young people, we vehemently criticized all institutions of power from our parents to government. The lyrics of Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are a-Changin’ characterized what appeared to be the pervasive sentiment of the baby boomers at the time when he said the “old road” of our “mothers and fathers” is “rapidly agin.”

But, did we really abandon the “old road” of our parents, and take a “new one”?  Now that we have occupied the seats of power in government, business, academia, and media, and are transitioning to our golden years, it’s the ideal time to evaluate ourselves by the same standards we judged our parents.

The centerpiece of our legacy to date has to be the peace movement. However, although the Vietnam War was brought to an end, the U.S. has essentially remained in international conflicts ever since including Beirut, Grenada, Panama, the Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. And, if truth be told, we had an ulterior motive in our protests of the Vietnam War. Our necks were in the noose since the military draft was still in full effect and any one of us could suddenly find ourselves fighting an unpopular war in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Once the draft ended, war suddenly became more palatable and collectively the baby boomers fell silent in the face of war ever since.

While American deaths have plummeted since Vietnam largely due to weak adversaries, smart weapons, and quicker and better battlefield medical attention; civilian mortality rates are disturbingly high. We were outraged by events that unfolded in My Lai, yet civilian deaths in Iraq alone are estimated to be well over 100,000 since 2003, even by U.S. government measurements. The folly and futility of the Vietnam War are now being replayed simultaneously in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The record of racial equality in America is also a bit disappointing. Although the 1960’s brought about desegregation, the plight of people of color has not improved much in the decades that followed. The gap between rich and poor has only grown more pronounced, and the digital divide makes the disadvantaged ever more challenged.

Our incarceration rate is the highest in the world. In 2005, for the first time in our history, more than one in 100 Americans was behind bars with a disproportionate amount being people of color. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics non-Hispanic blacks accounted for 39.4% of the total prison and jail population in 2009, even though they represented only 13.6% of the U.S. population according to the 2010 census. One in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34 are behind bars.

Today we teeter on repealing or amending much of the environmental legislation of the past four decades at the expense of the environment and to the benefit of big business. We have shunned global efforts that deal with atmospheric threats refusing to support the Convention on Biodiversity treaty at the Earth Summit in 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. 193 nations ratified the former and the U.S. remains the only signatory out of 192 nations not to have ratified the latter.

All-in-all we have behaved no differently than our parents. Our lofty aspirations and criticism of our parents’ generation were hypocritical in light of what we accomplished. War is pervasive as ever, the plight of people of color is still alarming, and we shun world and scientific opinion in the face of the greatest environmental threats mankind ever confronted. Some of the problems that remain as we fade into our senior years may not be entirely of our doing, but much of it is. Given that we preached such high ideals and lambasted our parents in the process, I think all of us baby boomers owe our parents an apology, not because our principles were wrong, but because we were wrong about ourselves.

HELPING TO END LINGERING SEGREGATION IN AMERICA

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 brought an end to segregation in America, but economic segregation is stronger than ever today. Economic status coupled with some discrimination generally leads to separate neighborhoods for people of color and separate schools for their children. For many children of color, lifelong poverty is a fait accompli before they reach adulthood. By that time, they have dropped so far behind more economically advantaged white children to make it virtually impossible for many to compete for college admissions, let alone afford it. Their financial future is nearly preordained to be no better than their parents.

You can point the finger of blame anywhere you want, but the bottom line is that children have no say in their fate and are innocent victims of an educational system that usually fails to afford them the tools and resources to compete academically. By and large, schools in poor communities, especially urban areas, are far below the standards of predominantly white, suburban schools. Many good teachers and administrators naturally gravitate to the highest paying school districts.

Combine inferior schools with a child’s home environment and the disparity widens even further. Household items that advantaged children take for granted like computers are not so prevalent in poorer homes. Because of the cycle of poverty, parents or guardians are far more likely to be poorly educated and therefore unequipped to help their children with school work. Children of color are far more likely to be growing up in dysfunctional households. Many are being raised by grandparents. According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services almost two-thirds of the children in foster care are African-American, American Indian, or Hispanic.

Trying to quickly change the home environment of poor, minority children would be a daunting task, but making their schools better is clearly within our societal capacity to do.

We can apply some of the same methods used to keep our military at near-peak readiness. The United States maintains five federally funded military academies: The United States Military Academy, the Naval Academy, the Coast Guard Academy, the Air Force Academy, and the Merchant Marine Academy. The guiding principal behind these institutions is to create a steady infusion of talented officers to help keep the military at its best. Student cadets attend these military colleges tuition-free with room and board in exchange for several years of military or military-related service.

Why not create five federal teaching academies where our nation’s best teacher and administrator candidates could receive a free education in exchange for five years of service in poorer K-12 schools throughout the country? Each academy could be focused on a particular field of study from arts and humanities to science and engineering. Within five years we could have 25,000 or more talented educators working in schools they would otherwise not consider. The whole educational makeup of underfunded schools in poor communities would be transformed and energized.

The military and its related military academies protect our economic and strategic interests worldwide. These teaching academies would protect these same interests here at home by creating more and better educated high school graduates who would go on to college and beyond. In today’s global economy, the demand for talented individuals is more essential than ever if a nation is to remain strong. We have already seen the emerging power of countries like China, Brazil, and India largely due to their large, well educated workforces.

Furthermore, by better educating the poor we could begin to break the cycle of poverty that has plagued our nation for over a century, thereby reducing the cost of social programs like welfare. A study by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services agency found that “families living in poverty were the least likely to have resources available to them” and “the more compromised these families are, the more likely it is that they eventually will come into contact with the child welfare or some other social system.”

A study conducted by the State University of New York - Binghamton found that three decades ago the U.S. prison population was about one-eighth its current size and that people of color today account for more than 70 per cent of our prison population. Poverty breeds crime and creating better schools in poor neighborhoods will offer young adults viable and lucrative career paths other than crime. This, in turn, will reduce the cost of running the largest prison system in the entire world.

Any child given a good education and a fair chance to compete will acquire two essential ingredients for success: hope and self-esteem. Who can argue with a more equitable approach to education that helps children in need, reduces the cost of social services and prisons, and creates a more vibrant and powerful economy?

Jeff Gewert Sandy Hook, CT © Copyright 2012, Jeff Gewert

HOPE FOR DISADVANTAGE KIDS WHERE YOU MIGHT NOT EXPECT IT

No one can blame a child in a poor community who fails to achieve certain academic standards when faced with huge inequalities in the quality of education. Therefore, you would think there would be a relative consensus that we as a society should do more to help these children.

Instead, the blame game takes center stage. The middle-class and above often blame the parents and guardians of these children characterizing them as unmotivated, lazy, and entitlement-dependent. The parents on the other hand frequently hold the schools and government accountable. No matter where the blame is directed or where it rests, the fact remains the children are innocent.

These kids have enough going against them. The average middle-class child has a relatively stable home environment, well educated parents, some degree of family wealth, and a solid support network. None of this exists in many poor households.

If government with societal support could sustain comprehensive, concerted, and substantive programs to give children the education they need to compete, a whole generation could rise out of the perpetual cycle of poverty. And the cost would likely to be less than the parade of half-hearted, disingenuous, band-aid solutions implemented since the New Deal.

Unfortunately, this is not likely to happen anytime soon, in fact, it may never happen. There is hope, however. Having mentored three young boys over the past 12 years, as well as producing several video documentaries about underserved children who succeed in adulthood, I have seen one common thread that applies to just about every success. That thread is a strong-willed parent or guardian who stresses education, while guiding the child with consistency, tenacity, encouragement, and love.

These parents (hereafter to include guardians) relentlessly police their children to make absolutely certain they are always doing their school work and building other life skills necessary to succeed. Of course, not every parent has the wherewithal to do this, but the ones who do cannot afford to pass up an opportunity to help ensure their child has a better life. This is no easy task for many, particularly for grandparents who should be enjoying their golden years, or single, working mothers who toil long hours in grueling jobs.

In the absence of these guiding parents, children come home from school and do nothing except watch TV, play video games, and interact with other children who are often reinforcing negative behavior. Summers are spent much the same way. All this while advantaged kids are far more likely to be doing their homework and honing their academic skills in the summer, thereby gaining an even greater advantage.

Surprisingly, some parents simply acquiesce to the will of the child, while others allow their children to participate in decisions that affect their future, at an age when they are incapable of understanding the ramifications. If given the chance, a child will invariably make the wrong decision.

After school programs, educational summer camps, and mentors can help, but they will not bear a lot of fruit without a dedicated parent at home. Furthermore, non-profits are often under-funded, and consequently understaffed and mismanaged. The level of support parents assume their children are getting may not be the case. And mentors are part-time and do not typically get involved in day-to-day academic support.

Like it or not, the schools, non-profits, and mentors are not going to have any profound affect on a child unless the parent nurtures a home environment conducive to learning and shelters the child from the negative influences of media and the neighborhood. Only then will a child have any real chance of breaking free of poverty.

© Copyright 2012, Jeff Gewert