No more should we depend on government funding to assist in the development of our communities, but should organize to take our communities into our own hands. When the government has control of the funds, they also have control of what information is dispatched and what agenda is set for the Black residences. This is not what we want.

What we need are Black leaders and educators to take charge of the community instead of the political and religious pimps who pander to politicians and brownnose for Faith-based handouts. Parents are most important.

Parent groups should mobilize for the concern of the next Black generation instead of leaving this to the schools and churches. Below are provisions of government programs that could be operated by grassroots teams of parents and serious activist instead of government regulation.

Information and Training Provided Through Family Resource Centers
Family resource centers offer many types of support to families, including parenting classes, the organization of volunteer activities for schools, and the provision of information and ideas to families about how to help children with homework and other curriculum-related activities.

Some also provide families with services such as the transportation and childcare needed for families to participate in center activities, as well as referrals for health, employment, or housing needs. All operate under the guiding philosophy that schools and families need broad-based support to educate children.

Outreach Strategies to Keep Parents Informed
Schools that are successful in building school-family partnerships develop and use outreach mechanisms to channel information to parents on an ongoing basis. These mechanisms include distributing weekly or monthly parent newsletters, posting fliers in places where parents congregate, developing parent handbooks, making telephone calls, and conducting home visits. One focus group participant underscored the importance of school-home contacts that share positive information about children as well as problems the child may be having.

Several of the programs profiled for this report have developed special strategies for ensuring that each family receives personal, customized communication from their child's school throughout the school year.

The problem with the above agenda is that it leaves too much responsibility for our children in the hands of the schools. The objectives look good on paper but are they being implemented correctly and with enough concern, as it would be from actual parents. Programs such as this should be headed up by parents and controlled by parents, not school administration.

What is in the literature distributed to parents? Is it on how parents should raise and or direct their children or does it leave room for open participation and dialogue from parents to take a leadership role? Instead of us allowing the government to regulate what we teach our children through this literature, why do we not regulate to them what we want distributed in the literature?

The only way to teach children is through the parent thus the parent should have the answers on what children need to know and learn. The school system is to teach children the basics of academia, not life lessons or lessons about sex, drugs, or violence, that is the parent's job and we should not turn this job over to the school system.

As a parent or group of parents, we can organize a community group that interprets what the children need to know in areas of sex, drugs, and crime. We can meet once or twice a week to discuss what is best for our children, write it down, and present it to the local school system for publication. We can contact city officials for use of public recreation centers to meet as well as have regular meeting with police precincts or the city police chief.

We must take back our communities from government bureaucrats, indifferent policy makers and school administrators. We must also open a dialog with church leaders, clinics and neighborhood physicians, and district representatives to present a plan for our children instead of them applying their own assumed agenda to our lives. Without a grassroots effort to liberate our children, they will remain subjects in this paternalistic system.

Source from http://www.ed.gov/pubs/SER/index.html

© 2005 By CR Hamilton