And I’ve said it for years, 20, 30 years: They can’t read. It should be: That’s all you’re going to do for the next year is learn how to read. Now, people will say, well, they’re going to be behind. They’re behind anyway! Let’s just stop and give them one skill that’s going to give them some self-esteem. And build from there.
If you raise the graduation rate by 20%, you lower your felonious assault rate by 10%. (Research generally supports the argument that more education leads to less criminal activity and violent crime .)
But you can’t focus just on the guns. You have to focus on the bigger issue.
You talk about the lack of family and community support. Why is that so important?
When we don’t wrap around these kids, the gang does. They will say, hey, and they put $5 in an 8-year-old’s pocket to go and get food. Later on, it’s a bit more money to carry a package. And it keeps going from there. You can’t just look at the homicides.
And they have a life I can’t even begin to imagine?
Yes. We have to drill down. The majority of people who are doing these homicides, the majority of these people don’t deal with tomorrow. There is no tomorrow.
I’ve had kids that say, when they were 16, ‘I expect to be either in jail or dead before I’m 21.’ So, what’s going to stop them from doing anything they want to do? They grow up in these areas, they don’t really leave them. They may go into another area of the city, but they don’t see people who are role models.
And kids, if they’re not reading by the third-grade level, you’re going to see them on TV. Kindergarten through third grade you learn to read. After third grade, you read to learn.
If they can’t read, they have no self-esteem.
I remember once taking four teenagers from the corner – 16 years old, and putting them in the coroner’s car. One of the things that they said to me was, I said, ‘What’s going to get you off the corner.’ They said, ‘Oh if I could get a job that pays $10 an hour.’ And I am saying to myself, $10 an hour? That’s not very much. But I took them to Kroger’s. We walked out five minutes later. None of them could fill out the application. They could not fill out the application. So where were they? Back on the street.”
So when I became president of Cincinnati State, I said, look, we have to have jobs for people who can only write their names. Only write. Their. Names.
One of the things we did was to list things that you could do not by courses, but by time. We have three months – 90 days – people would say, ‘Oh, I can give you three months.’ Well, I can teach you how to draw blood in three months, get you a job drawing blood.”
You’ve gotta deal with it in the short term: Get the guns off the streets. Add the federal charges for the guns. Be tough on them. But you’ve got to deal with the long term. Educating these kids. Feeding them. There are kids who’ve never had seconds. Never had two hot dogs. And if they’re hungry, they’re going to steal.
I’ve seen first graders who get a free breakfast try to stick a couple of cereal boxes in their pocket.
How does all of this make you feel?
You have to guard your feelings so that you don’t become complacent and just accept it.
So we’re failing?
Of course we are. People talk about a collective impact. There is no collective impact in Cincinnati. If we do, tell me why children go to bed hungry? Collective impact means everyone has a stake. We don’t have a collective will. Show me one social problem we have cured.
The above conversation has been edited for clarity. Enquirer reporter Terry DeMio recorded and transcribed the interview before editing. In some cases, questions and answers have been shortened and moved to make the conversations easier to follow and to remove unnecessary asides and repetitions.
