“This is what we do”

This is what we do. Just walkin’ the halls all day, baby. F–k class, that s–t’s for clowns man. [Laughter from his friends] We don’t go to class ’round here. Man, f–k academics. That ain’t me, dawg. Academics, we gonna leave that to them nerd-ass mahf–kers. We gon’ keep s–t straight hood up in here.
–9th grader, Hard Times at Douglass High

I was checking out the new HBO documentary Hard Time’s at Douglass High last night, and it’s ridiculously depressing. The documentary tries to pin some of the blame on No Child Left Behind, but I’m having none of that. This school’s failure is not caused by grade level testing–this is a breakdown of the family structure on a massive, society-wide level. In this case the society is Baltimore.

Imagine the fourth season of The Wire writ large, and in real life. That’s what we’re dealing with in this documentary. One girl talks about how her mother and father are dead, and she doesn’t know anyone whose mother and father live together. Stories like that abound.

I mean, what do you even do about this? This isn’t a function of the school being poor, or not having motivated teachers, or other structural problems…this is entirely about the homelife. If I had treated my principal like one kid near the beginning of the documentary who refused to go to class, my dad would’ve knocked the hell out of me. And I would have deserved it. But there’s no structure in the home. Another administrator talks about graduating kids and getting them all in college. Seriously? How about we work on literacy first. Actually, how about we work on teen pregnancy first.

To be fair, Hard TImes at Douglass High doesn’t skirt around any of these problems. It’s worth your time to watch, though I’d ignore a fair amount of the narration/commentary. If a segment of society rejects education, what are we supposed to do about it?