Did you know that six out of ten of the boys who could help build our future drop out of school and end up in jail?
That’s a full 60% and that is one scary number.
These boys are just like your sons—only without the same opportunities.
These boys are black.
The M3 Foundation is changing that one small step at a time.
M3 was started three years ago by KG Charles-Harris, CEO of Emanio, who I met first as a client and now count as a good friend.
The following is from this year’s M3 year-end report.
“M3 has had tremendous success during the past 3 years. We started with 10 underperforming boys at King Middle School in Berkeley in 2006 and expanded to all three middle schools in Berkeley with more than 30 students in the program during the past school year.
The boys achieved an average GPA of 3.0 during the past school year, some starting as low as 0.6 GPA. The average GPA was raised from 2.7 to 3.0 during the last semester.
All our boys are from low-income families, many with single parent or guardian backgrounds. Since 54 percent of black boys drop out of school on a national level, and 73 percent in the San Francisco Bay Area, these results are a tremendous boost. We expect to improve these further during the coming year.”
Take a good look at the numbers. That’s the kind of improvement that No Child Left Behind was supposed to achieve—but didn’t.
M3 accomplished it by working directly with the boys, not by teaching them to take tests or drumming rote memorization into their heads, but by showing them the value of education and providing the attention needed to appeal to their pride.
Instead of being told they could not they were told that they could.
Not just told, but supported and encouraged.
And they succeeded.
Finally, M3 packs a lot more bang for the buck than most programs do—check it out.
Come back next week for an interview with KG Charles-Harris.
As most of you know I write a series on Thursday called Leadership’s Future that looks at education, parenting, kids, Millennials, etc. In the course of my reading I see a articles that would be of interest, but I can’t fit them all in, so I thought that today I’d offer up some of the good ones that I haven’t had time to feature.
Assuming you live on this planet you’re aware that there’s a recession going on, so what’s happening in the world of youth and parents?
Do you tweet? Some college professors are finding uses for Twitter in their teaching, although enhancing spelling isn’t one of them; speaking of education, some schools are delivering sex ed via cell phone.
Multiple studies by professors at a variety of universities show that having interracial roommates reduces prejudice. Not that surprising, it’s hard to hate a real individual vs. a hypothetical stereotype.
Finally, there’s a new texting champion (control your enthusiasm) who practiced by sending 14,000 texts a month. Isn’t that thrilling?
What’s going on? This post is a call for your thoughts.
I simply don’t understand what today’s parents are thinking—assuming they are thinking at all.
18 years ago Wanda Holloway tried to hire a hit man to improve her 13 year old daughter’s chances of making the cheer-leading squad.
More recently Lori Drew helped her teenage daughter fake a MySpace page that drove another teen to suicide.
Parents launch efforts to destroy teachers who don’t hand out ‘As’; they scream at referees and umpires when they disagree with a call; they threaten coaches who don’t allow their kids to play enough.
On one hand they enable their kids to avoid all responsibility and on the other castigate them for not living up to whatever parental dreams they are trying to realize.
I know that it’s not all parents; and this isn’t a new rant, but it’s one to which I keep coming back.
And it came back with a vengeance, in fact you might say my outrage cup runneth over, when I read that Senator John Ensign’s parents paid off his mistress.
“The wealthy parents of Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) gave $96,000 last year to the staffer who was then his mistress and to her family, his attorney said yesterday.
The gifts to Cynthia L. Hampton and her family were given “out of concern for the well-being of longtime family friends during a difficult time,” according to the lawyer, Paul Coggins.”
Ensign’s parents aren’t Gen-Xers and probably not Boomers, so this problem isn’t new.
You read stories about helicopter parents all the time, but when does it end?
How can anyone expect a person to make good choices when their mistakes (and worse) are ‘handled’ for them by their parents?
What do you think about Ensign’s parents’ actions? Obviously, pay-offs aren’t in the same class as murder; are they better or equal with bullying?
I don’t have any answers, but we’d better find some—and fast!
An open discussion is a place to start so let’s hear your thoughts.
Last Thursday the John Ensign (US Senator) scandal triggered a post about the hypocrisy kids see these days in so-called leaders; not their lies, but their over the top do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do attitudes and actions.
In response, Dan Erwin commented that rather than standards, i.e., set rules, he preferred to teach his kids about covenants, because “Legalism, in all its forms, is really death-giving stuff. I go back to covenant…covenants get renegotiated.”
By definition, a covenant is “an agreement, usually formal, between two or more persons to do or not do something specified.”
But Ensign’s hypocrisy was pushed off the hot seat by the same day when South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford was caught in an affair.
While I think Ensign’s worst hypocrisy ties to his position in Promise Keepers, it pales in comparison to Sanford’s when you consider his historical stances.
I agree with Dan’s covenant approach because I’ve always believed that humans and absolutes aren’t a working or winning combination.
But to renegotiate a covenant, whether with a spouse or constituency, requires at least a modicum of rationality and Sanford’s own words put that in question.
Over a 20-year period, ”There were a handful of instances wherein I crossed the lines I shouldn’t have crossed as a married man, but never crossed the ultimate line.”
Shades of President Clinton, whom Sanford roundly condemned during the same period.
Those times “took place during trips outside the country to ”blow off steam” with male friends.”
All the while preaching and campaigning based on a “family values” persona.
“…he would die ”knowing that I had met my soul mate.”
Isn’t that what his wife is supposed to be?
”I owe it too much to my boys and to the last 20 years with Jenny to not try this larger walk of faith.”
Owe it to what? The last 20 years of lies? Can you find anything rational in this statement?
Out of curiosity I did a completely unscientific poll of young people I know ranging in age from mid teens to mid twenties.
Much to some of their parents surprise they were fairly well informed on the subject.
None seemed either shocked or surprised and most said that the bad part was the stupidity of getting caught.
They said they saw getting caught as the real error in most of the stuff about which they’d read or heard during their lives.
And that is what’s truly sad.
While the destruction and disillusionment caused by leaders such as Madoff, Skilling, Sanford and all their act-alikes is terrible, the level of cynicism bred by this kind of hypocrisy is the truly tragic damage being done to our future.
Oh what great examples are presented to kids these days.
Some of the worst types of hypocrites are thriving.
The first are all the ‘leaders’ who turn out to be crooks—Dennis Kowalski, Jeffrey Skilling, Bernie Madoff and a host of other hedge fund managers—to name a very few.
Then there are those who don’t practice what they preach; worse, they preach from very high profiles and at very loud levels.
I hate using political examples, but they’re the most prevalent.
One such is former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who acknowledged having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky fiasco—which was also hypocritical.
But the bottom of the barrel are folks such as Senator John Ensign, a ‘leader’ of Promise Keepers, an organization which, among other things, promotes a teenage abstinence policy of education, who chose to screw around (pun intended).
Gone are the days when kids listened wide-eyed and respectful to the words flowing from political, business and parental lips.
These days the kids listen, and then check out the actions of the bodies attached to those lips, either directly or by Google.
It’s not about the sex; sex and power having gone together since time immemorial. And it’s not even about who lied when caught. Almost every human lies about sex, including the kids.
A few centuries ago when I was young there was a saying, “People in glass housed shouldn’t throw stones.”
So before you become a ‘leader’ for any cause or attitude, do make sure that your own actions conform to what’s expected of those who follow you.
But be warned; reasons, excuses and apologies don’t cut it with today’s cynical youth.
And if you’re thinking of following, Google the person and make sure that their actions conform to your own standards of ‘acceptable’.
(Be sure to check out Biz Levity’s irreverent look at the Ensign scandal.)
I’m old enough to remember when maturity was something to strive for; when living with your parents post 18 made you a loser; when being cool also meant being independent and paying for your own place was a badge of honor.
In other words, people are “coming of age” far later in life than ever before.
Maybe this isn’t surprising, since people aren’t aging the way they did.
In books and films from the forties and before, even into the fifties, people in their fifties and sixties were described or portrayed as elderly, while those in their seventies and up were considered ancient—tell that to a Boomer if you want to die young.
But is it really necessary to delay growing up just because people are staying young longer?
Does staying young really require immaturity?
Has ‘adult’ become a dirty word synonymous with out-of-date, out-of-touch, unable to grow and change?
If so, we are in deep doo-doo.
Obviously, there are millions of responsible twenty and thirty-year-olds who are building careers and relationships and families.
But there are millions more who are still living at home; hanging out and who have no real concept of responsibility.
Then there are those who look great on the surface, but thwart them, throw a few obstacles their way, or scratch them with a real conversation and the immaturity oozes out.
If this keeps up the 2025 remake of “The 40 Year Old Virgin” will be “The 50Year Old Virgin” or maybe 55.
Last week I wrote that it seemed that change was in the wind for education and parental attitudes that have produced millions of poorly educated and entitled young people.
But it looks as if parents are still in the forefront of teaching their kids that there is no accountability and no consequences for actions such as cheating.
At Ohio’s Centerburg High, in the heartland of our country where, we are constantly told, ethics are at their highest,“so many of the senior class either cheated on final exams or knew about the cheating but failed to report it that district officials cancelled graduation.”
“Centerburg High, with about 400 students, is one of the state’s top schools, with an “excellent” academic rating last year, according to the state Department of Education. “Last year, the school had a 99% graduation rate, compared to a statewide rate of 87%.”
The cheating was the result of a senior hacking into a teacher’s computer, stealing the tests and distributing them to the entire class.
“Superintendent Dorothy Holden said the district had to take a stand and let students know that cheating can’t be tolerated… “We’re not going to put that type of honor out there knowing that many of you are walking through there and you cheated, you lied, you denied.”
According to Holden, “Some students admit they cheated; others said they knew of the cheating but didn’t participate; and others said they had the tests but didn’t use them. One student who used the test still failed.”
Three cheers for Dorothy Holden.
Of course, things didn’t end there.
“Some parents angry about the cancellation are organizing an unofficial graduation ceremony.”
Three thousand boos for those parents whose time would be better spent teaching their little darlings that lying and cheating aren’t nice.
Politicians and the media are rabid about the problems with school administrators and teachers and the public wrings its collective hands at the dismal state of US education.
But rarely do I read stories condemning the actions of parents for their active role in producing kids who can’t spell accountability and see nothing wrong with lying and cheating.
And before you say I’m being too hard on them remember that the parents are your colleagues and these are the kids you’ll be hiring—your workers, doctors, lawyers—and who, eventually, will lead our country, industry and social organizations.
Do you really think they’ll do things differently then?
Two articles caught my eye this week, both on a very positive note.
Education
The first is an overview discussing what Arne Duncan, the new education secretary, did in Chicago and wants to do nationally. It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot more than we’ve seen in years. Not only that, but the price tag per school isn’t that outrageous considering what I’ve seen previously and he doesn’t seem to expect states to pull the funding out of thin air as NCLB did.
It won’t be a silver bullet (what is), but maybe we’re finally moving (glacially) in a positive direction.
Parenting
The second article is even more encouraging, since it looks at parents—who are at the heart of this mess.
But I see this new fad as a move in the right direction. It’s about letting kids play, doing less and (maybe) realizing that your kids are not the center of the universe or even your primary purpose in life.
How’s that for revolutionary?
Can you imagine? Instead of having every minute of every week packed with scheduled functions, parents would expend some of that energy making sure that their kids used the free time to run around, play using their imaginations, read, think and dream, as opposed to texting, keyboarding or watching TV.
They could use some of the extra time and energy that went into keeping their offspring on schedule to staying involved with their spouse and some more on feeding their own soul.
They might even have enough energy to learn to say ‘no’ and stop indulging their kids to the point of entitlement.
Sounds like a trip to Fantasy Island, but who knows, it might be part of the recession’s silver lining.
Monday Slacker Manager wrote that people quit managers, not companies; I took that further in my Tuesday post saying that
Adequate managers manage employees.
Good managers manage people.
Great managers manage persons.
Marvin commented that this also applied to families, saying, “It was a great reminder that people don’t leave families, they leave the leaders of that family. … Adequate husbands/fathers have a wife and kids, Good husbands/fathers provide for their wife and kids, Great husbands/fathers learn the individual needs of their wife and kids and serve them accordingly.”
I know from Marvin’s site that he is coming from a Christian perspective and I respect that.
However, I’m not willing to assume that the male is the ‘leader’ in a marriage—nor do I think the woman is (no offense to any same-sex couples reading this) and I certainly hope that the kids aren’t.
I think marriages should be partnerships, with both contributing to the vision and each leading within his/her strengths and supporting the other as appropriate—and I don’t mean this in the traditional sense.
Next, I’m not completely comfortable with the paraphrasing.
Having a wife and kids is possible for any male with $20 bucks for the license (it’s probably gone up) and active sperm and those two things certainly don’t make them adequate in my mind.
The ‘good’ ones provide what? Food, shelter and safety or more intangible things, such as love, respect and acceptance.
There’s nothing wrong with the definition of ‘great’ as long as it includes unconditional love, unconditional respect and unconditional acceptance for life choices—barring those that are illegal—that may not agree with others in the family.
I also think that ‘great’ is more than serving individual needs in kids; sometimes their needs shouldn’t be served or they will come to expect that. Serving is also about standing back and letting the kid make mistakes starting at a very young age. No parent serves their child by smoothing every kink, filling every pothole and easing every difficulty on the road to adulthood.
Serving is about being sure that kids are exposed to and learn to deal with the real world, one that doesn’t always live up to expectations or work the way one wants.
My own opinion is that this can’t happen if the child is raised in a homogenous environment spending their time with like-minded people. I also think it’s unfair to the kid, because eventually they’ll have to function in the real world, which is messy, diverse and often uncooperative.
This is as true whether it’s the Latino kids living in the Mission District of San Francisco being able to do everything in Spanish except school or the home-schooled kid whose entire world and contact revolves around their family and church.
Homogeny is crippling when it comes to producing adults who can move in a diverse, multicultural, multi-thought, multi-everything global economy.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
The M3 Foundation is changing that one small step at a time.
Assuming you live on this planet you’re aware that there’s a recession going on, so what’s happening in the world of youth and parents?
18 years ago 
In response, 
The first are all the ‘leaders’ who turn out to be crooks—Dennis Kowalski, Jeffrey Skilling, Bernie Madoff and a host of other hedge fund managers—to name a very few.
“Some parents angry about the cancellation are organizing an unofficial graduation ceremony.”
Two articles caught my eye this week, both on a very positive note.
The ‘good’ ones provide what? Food, shelter and safety or more intangible things, such as love, respect and acceptance.
