If you’ve lived in Philadelphia for a while, you’ve probably gone to the Welcome America! Festival.
It’s our annual Fourth of July celebration, complete with free concerts and a stunning fireworks display over the Art Museum, attracting tens of thousands of partygoers and tourists to Ben Franklin Parkway each year.
If you’ve lived in Philadelphia for a while, you’re probably also aware that the Art Museum isn’t the only place you’ll be exposed to fireworks this summer. Your own neighborhood, in the days leading up to Independence Day, will sound like a war zone every night.
While fireworks are still illegal in Pennsylvania, they’re easy to get and relatively cheap. And the customers aren’t just explosion-happy teenagers, but supposedly mature adults – most of whom ignore all safety and common sense when storing and using the mini-bombs.
The result? Starting in late June, you’ll be startled awake at least once by someone setting off ordinance in their small rowhouse back yard. You’ll wonder for a minute whether that was fireworks or gunfire, then go back to sleep. This will happen often, so get used to it.
There’s nothing quite like driving down the street late at night when the firecrackers and bottle rockets start going off nearby. It’s even more fun when you’re a pedestrian, because nothing on earth is funnier to these slack-jawed knuckleheads than watching a hapless civilian duck for cover.
I find it difficult to believe that Black parents, especially in an urban environment like Philadelphia, would not see the inherent stupidity in allowing their kids to be anywhere near fireworks.
Forget the statistics about the injuries, death, and fires that result from fireworks accidents every year.
On second thought, let’s not forget them. According to the National Fire Protection Association, about 9,800 fireworks-related injuries are treated in U.S. hospital emergency rooms on and around Independence Day.
Each year, there are an estimated 32,600 reported fires started by fireworks. These fires result in 6 civilian deaths, 70 civilian injuries and $34 million in direct property damage.
The most common injuries are severe burns, loss of fingers, loss of sight in one or both eyes, and various degrees of hearing loss. It may also interest you to note that the highest rates of injuries are to children ages 5 to 14.
But leaving all that aside, think of the social climate here in Philly for a moment and you’ll see my point.
What if, instead of just scaring the bejeebers out of the neighbors, the loud fireworks startle officers in a passing police cruiser? They hear Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!, and as they leap from the car, guns drawn and fearing for their lives, they see four Black teenagers huddled together, powder flashes and smoke still coming from that direction.
You know what happens next.
Four funerals, a couple of cops suspended with intent to dismiss, and the community is once again outraged over the trigger-happy police shooting first and asking questions later.
To save time, I’ll ask the question now.
If you believe the police to be trigger-happy cowboys just waiting for an excuse to gun down minorities in the street, why in the name of Albert Einstein would you provoke them into a gunfight? If you are only armed with firecrackers, and don’t actually have a gun, then scaring a trigger-happy cowboy into pulling his gun and firing seems… unwise.
If you’re convinced that fireworks are just harmless fun, despite the government statistics and my nightmare shooting scenario above, then I can’t help you. In fact, none of us can.
You are among the hard to reach parents, who continue to fire guns in the air to celebrate the New Year, despite the clear danger to your fellow citizens. You continue to buy realistic looking toy guns for your children, happy to ignore the news stories of dozens of dead children shot by police and others who thought the guns were real.
So fine, go right ahead and ignore the fact that your kids are outside playing with high explosives. Giggle along with them as they frighten the elderly, cause near collisions, and set the neighborhood dogs to howling. Giggle until one firecracker – just one – misfires.
The least you can do is buy them a couple of books to read over the summer. I suggest Treasure Island and Moby Dick. That way, they won’t feel too bad about wearing an eye patch and having a hook for a hand.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Monday, June 22, 2009
I Pity The FOOL
It occurs to me that here in Philadelphia, our approach to gun control may be all wrong.
We are motivated by outrage – the righteous indignation of a people justifiably weary of watching bodies pile up in the morgue and seeing too many families torn by grief.
If guns are the weapon of choice, we reason, simply ban the guns. Take away the split-second finality of a bad decision and you take a bite out of the murder rate. It seems like a common sense, cause-and-effect rationale if you live in a modern-day war zone.
The majority of Pennsylvanians outside our fair city, however, are not keen on any legislation which would supersede their sacred right to keep and bear arms. With a state law restricting local municipalities from enacting their own firearms ordinances, legislators are at an impasse. Every year Philadelphia lawmakers try their best to get gun bills through, and every year those bills die in committee.
May I suggest a compromise?
Instead of sweeping gun reform laws which apply to everyone, we make a simple change in the requirements for firearm ownership, to wit:
Stupid people cannot own guns.
Here’s how we pull it off: Politicians routinely call for blue ribbon panels to study whatever happens to be the social problem of the moment. Those panels conduct research, hold meetings, and then issue a 300-page opinion paper on their findings – by which time no one remembers why they were impaneled in the first place.
Now, our politicians can argue, we have a chance to establish a blue ribbon panel for the public good. Get a bunch of sociologists, psychologists, and social workers together and establish some sort of means testing as to what level of intelligence, common sense and temperament is necessary for responsible gun ownership.
Call it the Firearms Ownership Objection Level, or FOOL test. If you don’t pass the FOOL test of responsible gun ownership, then you don’t get to own a gun.
I offer as evidence two cases making headlines this week, and you can decide for yourself.
Presently on trial in Common Pleas Court is Vonzell “Pooh” Roundtree, of Southwest Philly. On the night of July 22, 2007, Roundtree, his uncle Jamar Thompson, and Thompson’s friend Stacy Gallmon were watching the Bernard Hopkins – Winky Wright fight at Abay’s Wheeler bar when an argument escalated between Thompson and two other patrons. A fight ensued, and Roundtree pulled out a 9mm pistol, ostensibly to protect his family member.
Roundtree emptied the gun, and when the smoke cleared, both offending patrons were dead. So was his uncle Jamar. Stacy Gallmon died of multiple gunshot wounds two days later. Either Roundtree is the world’s worst shot, unfamiliar with the concept of ‘aim’ – or he’s just plain stupid.
Last Friday night Joseph Jimenez and Scott Riley were at a small gathering of friends in the Bridgeport section, playing beer pong.
For those who haven’t been to college or the military, beer pong is a drinking game in which players toss a ping-pong ball into cups filled with beer. If the ball lands in one of your cups, you drink the beer. By the end of the game, both teams usually end up drunk, and a good time is had by all. Unless of course, one of the players is a heavily armed poor loser like Jimenez.
Talking trash after the game, Riley, according to witnesses, dismissed Jimenez’ drunken threats with, “Shoot me! Shoot me! You ain't got the balls!”
More accurately, he should have said, “You ain’t got the brains!”, because Jimenez then pulled a .40 caliber cannon out of his waistband and shot Riley in the neck, killing him.
The gun was legally registered to Jimenez, who clearly would have failed the FOOL test. Police found Roundtree’s gun, along with two other handguns, in his bag – a bag clearly marked with his name on it. Does this sound like someone who could pass a FOOL test?
These mental giants, remember, are only the tip of the iceberg. Right now, all over Philadelphia, there are dozens - maybe hundreds - of slack-jawed dullards in possession of deadly weapons with itchy trigger fingers and the intelligence of a bullfrog. The FOOL tests could help weed out the worst of the worst.
And don’t give me any lip about discrimination. Does Pennsylvania’s driver’s license test discriminate against blind people? Common sense dictates that we don’t let the visually impaired drive automobiles because they’d pose an immediate public danger.
That alone, it seems to me, is plenty enough reason not to let FOOLS have guns.
We are motivated by outrage – the righteous indignation of a people justifiably weary of watching bodies pile up in the morgue and seeing too many families torn by grief.
If guns are the weapon of choice, we reason, simply ban the guns. Take away the split-second finality of a bad decision and you take a bite out of the murder rate. It seems like a common sense, cause-and-effect rationale if you live in a modern-day war zone.
The majority of Pennsylvanians outside our fair city, however, are not keen on any legislation which would supersede their sacred right to keep and bear arms. With a state law restricting local municipalities from enacting their own firearms ordinances, legislators are at an impasse. Every year Philadelphia lawmakers try their best to get gun bills through, and every year those bills die in committee.
May I suggest a compromise?
Instead of sweeping gun reform laws which apply to everyone, we make a simple change in the requirements for firearm ownership, to wit:
Stupid people cannot own guns.
Here’s how we pull it off: Politicians routinely call for blue ribbon panels to study whatever happens to be the social problem of the moment. Those panels conduct research, hold meetings, and then issue a 300-page opinion paper on their findings – by which time no one remembers why they were impaneled in the first place.
Now, our politicians can argue, we have a chance to establish a blue ribbon panel for the public good. Get a bunch of sociologists, psychologists, and social workers together and establish some sort of means testing as to what level of intelligence, common sense and temperament is necessary for responsible gun ownership.
Call it the Firearms Ownership Objection Level, or FOOL test. If you don’t pass the FOOL test of responsible gun ownership, then you don’t get to own a gun.
I offer as evidence two cases making headlines this week, and you can decide for yourself.
Presently on trial in Common Pleas Court is Vonzell “Pooh” Roundtree, of Southwest Philly. On the night of July 22, 2007, Roundtree, his uncle Jamar Thompson, and Thompson’s friend Stacy Gallmon were watching the Bernard Hopkins – Winky Wright fight at Abay’s Wheeler bar when an argument escalated between Thompson and two other patrons. A fight ensued, and Roundtree pulled out a 9mm pistol, ostensibly to protect his family member.
Roundtree emptied the gun, and when the smoke cleared, both offending patrons were dead. So was his uncle Jamar. Stacy Gallmon died of multiple gunshot wounds two days later. Either Roundtree is the world’s worst shot, unfamiliar with the concept of ‘aim’ – or he’s just plain stupid.
Last Friday night Joseph Jimenez and Scott Riley were at a small gathering of friends in the Bridgeport section, playing beer pong.
For those who haven’t been to college or the military, beer pong is a drinking game in which players toss a ping-pong ball into cups filled with beer. If the ball lands in one of your cups, you drink the beer. By the end of the game, both teams usually end up drunk, and a good time is had by all. Unless of course, one of the players is a heavily armed poor loser like Jimenez.
Talking trash after the game, Riley, according to witnesses, dismissed Jimenez’ drunken threats with, “Shoot me! Shoot me! You ain't got the balls!”
More accurately, he should have said, “You ain’t got the brains!”, because Jimenez then pulled a .40 caliber cannon out of his waistband and shot Riley in the neck, killing him.
The gun was legally registered to Jimenez, who clearly would have failed the FOOL test. Police found Roundtree’s gun, along with two other handguns, in his bag – a bag clearly marked with his name on it. Does this sound like someone who could pass a FOOL test?
These mental giants, remember, are only the tip of the iceberg. Right now, all over Philadelphia, there are dozens - maybe hundreds - of slack-jawed dullards in possession of deadly weapons with itchy trigger fingers and the intelligence of a bullfrog. The FOOL tests could help weed out the worst of the worst.
And don’t give me any lip about discrimination. Does Pennsylvania’s driver’s license test discriminate against blind people? Common sense dictates that we don’t let the visually impaired drive automobiles because they’d pose an immediate public danger.
That alone, it seems to me, is plenty enough reason not to let FOOLS have guns.
The Valyoo of Edukashun
Sometimes, you just don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
When teachers at South Philadelphia High School complained to reporters last week that they were under pressure to promote, and even graduate, hundreds of badly failing students; outgoing principal Alice Heller defended the practice to the Philadelphia Inquirer with the it-would-be-funny-if-it-weren’t-so-frightening quote, “It's a good thing for self-esteem.”
It should be noted here that we’re not talking about high schoolers who might be just a little behind the curve and may need some tutoring. Many of these poor kids are functionally illiterate, unable to read simple directions or fill out a job application. They lack even basic math skills, unable to calculate their own change at the store.
Naturally, the local blogs and message boards lit up immediately with every vicious invective imaginable hurled at Heller. That’s because shortsighted finger pointing is a lot easier than critical examination. For instance, does anyone think for one minute that Ms. Heller thought that up by herself? The practice, known nationwide as social promotion, has been on urban public school radar screens for a couple of decades now.
Numerous studies conducted in the 1970’s and 80’s concluded that the practice of retention, or having students repeat the same grade, did not significantly improve their academic skills, but instead made them the object of ridicule among their peers. Now feeling alienated from school, these students tended to develop emotional and behavioral problems, making them a greater risk of dropping out altogether.
Several rigorous studies, for example, have found that repeating just one grade more than doubles the odds of dropping out of school. Students who repeat two grades have an 80 to 90 percent chance of dropping out.
As the dropout rate slowly increased to its current horrific numbers in urban school districts, social promotion became public education’s dirty little secret.
Districts, desperate to get a handle on rising dropout rates, quietly pushed the philosophy on principals, who were already under tremendous pressure to improve their numbers or face losing their positions. Those principals had no choice but to pass that pressure downward onto the teachers.
They made it difficult, if not impossible, to fail a student for the year. Teachers who did found themselves buried in a mountain of paperwork, or sitting through endless meetings and evaluations with administration with the express purpose of changing that F to a D, and shuffling the student along through the system. With the hundreds of other things teachers have to worry about, it just wasn’t worth it. It’s a lot easier to move the student along, perhaps freeing time for other, more worthy pupils.
Liberal education advocates, while well intentioned, didn’t view the idea from the perspective of the mostly minority students they claim to champion. It is poisonous and criminal to teach Black kids that society will keep lowering the bar for them because everybody knows they’re just too poor and slow to keep up.
Those kids would, and have, lived up (or down, in this case) to those lowered expectations.
Also complicit in the open conspiracy were local politicians. Once they got wind of the fact that each student left down a grade costs taxpayers anywhere from $5000 to $8000, they found few objections to social promotion.
Parents, of course, were just happy to see little Johnny graduate - never mind that he can’t read his own diploma.
There has always been a peer-driven stigma to being left back a grade, and I have no doubt that the studies are right – that social promotion keeps students from feeling bad about failing.
But so what?
Better hurt feelings now than to thrust them into the cold, cruel world completely unprepared for adulthood. Adults have to fill out forms, read reports, and keep timesheets and paperwork. Adults have to follow directions, read signs, and write checks. Adults have to shop for bargains, read warning labels, and pay bills.
And as any adult can tell you, the adult world is remarkably intolerant. No one cares if you need extra help, no one is willing to cut you any slack, and no one wants to hear your sad story. The adult world – which, by the way, could not care less about your self-esteem - is more than happy to simply label you a failure and move on.
Passing, and eventually graduating, students who lack the educational basics is a cruel recipe for a lifetime of failure - especially for students of color - and yet we do it every June.
Self-esteem doesn’t do you much good if it’s only temporary, and you can’t even spell it.
When teachers at South Philadelphia High School complained to reporters last week that they were under pressure to promote, and even graduate, hundreds of badly failing students; outgoing principal Alice Heller defended the practice to the Philadelphia Inquirer with the it-would-be-funny-if-it-weren’t-so-frightening quote, “It's a good thing for self-esteem.”
It should be noted here that we’re not talking about high schoolers who might be just a little behind the curve and may need some tutoring. Many of these poor kids are functionally illiterate, unable to read simple directions or fill out a job application. They lack even basic math skills, unable to calculate their own change at the store.
Naturally, the local blogs and message boards lit up immediately with every vicious invective imaginable hurled at Heller. That’s because shortsighted finger pointing is a lot easier than critical examination. For instance, does anyone think for one minute that Ms. Heller thought that up by herself? The practice, known nationwide as social promotion, has been on urban public school radar screens for a couple of decades now.
Numerous studies conducted in the 1970’s and 80’s concluded that the practice of retention, or having students repeat the same grade, did not significantly improve their academic skills, but instead made them the object of ridicule among their peers. Now feeling alienated from school, these students tended to develop emotional and behavioral problems, making them a greater risk of dropping out altogether.
Several rigorous studies, for example, have found that repeating just one grade more than doubles the odds of dropping out of school. Students who repeat two grades have an 80 to 90 percent chance of dropping out.
As the dropout rate slowly increased to its current horrific numbers in urban school districts, social promotion became public education’s dirty little secret.
Districts, desperate to get a handle on rising dropout rates, quietly pushed the philosophy on principals, who were already under tremendous pressure to improve their numbers or face losing their positions. Those principals had no choice but to pass that pressure downward onto the teachers.
They made it difficult, if not impossible, to fail a student for the year. Teachers who did found themselves buried in a mountain of paperwork, or sitting through endless meetings and evaluations with administration with the express purpose of changing that F to a D, and shuffling the student along through the system. With the hundreds of other things teachers have to worry about, it just wasn’t worth it. It’s a lot easier to move the student along, perhaps freeing time for other, more worthy pupils.
Liberal education advocates, while well intentioned, didn’t view the idea from the perspective of the mostly minority students they claim to champion. It is poisonous and criminal to teach Black kids that society will keep lowering the bar for them because everybody knows they’re just too poor and slow to keep up.
Those kids would, and have, lived up (or down, in this case) to those lowered expectations.
Also complicit in the open conspiracy were local politicians. Once they got wind of the fact that each student left down a grade costs taxpayers anywhere from $5000 to $8000, they found few objections to social promotion.
Parents, of course, were just happy to see little Johnny graduate - never mind that he can’t read his own diploma.
There has always been a peer-driven stigma to being left back a grade, and I have no doubt that the studies are right – that social promotion keeps students from feeling bad about failing.
But so what?
Better hurt feelings now than to thrust them into the cold, cruel world completely unprepared for adulthood. Adults have to fill out forms, read reports, and keep timesheets and paperwork. Adults have to follow directions, read signs, and write checks. Adults have to shop for bargains, read warning labels, and pay bills.
And as any adult can tell you, the adult world is remarkably intolerant. No one cares if you need extra help, no one is willing to cut you any slack, and no one wants to hear your sad story. The adult world – which, by the way, could not care less about your self-esteem - is more than happy to simply label you a failure and move on.
Passing, and eventually graduating, students who lack the educational basics is a cruel recipe for a lifetime of failure - especially for students of color - and yet we do it every June.
Self-esteem doesn’t do you much good if it’s only temporary, and you can’t even spell it.
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