One of the tried and true rationalizations for shoving regulation down our throats is to invoke our love of children. Everyone loves children, though some too much. Sometimes there is a real connection, but often it’s an excuse to impose arbitrary controls, invoking the name of a child so that sympathy overcomes reason.
While some invoke children to manipulate the system, some actually put children ahead of their own self-interest and do something real: For the children. Meet Jennifer and Mark White, formerly of Chicago and now of Michael, Illinois, very close to St. Louis.
Husband and wife Jennifer and Mark White are realizing their dream of helping at-risk youths in Calhoun County with the Dare to Dream Institute, School of Self Knowledge.
Jennifer, a former special education teacher, realized that there was a large swathe of students who were doomed to failure within the regular system, and decided that she would do something about it. With husband Mark, they put their money (and lives) where their mouth is:
Their successful alternative educational program targeted at-risk students and those who either failed or were expelled from traditional educational systems, and included an esteem- building summer vocational program where the students were paid to learn to cook deserts and bake breads sold through the school’s catering business as a fund-raiser.
In Calhoun County, the Whites began fall and winter tutoring courses for at-risk students last year, and have done some limited bread baking fund-raising of the students’ products at the farmer’s market in Alton, but have found they have had to readjust their two-year goal of being fully operational in regard to their dream of having a year-round program for at risk children ages 16 to 21.
The Whites have taken their program a step further, by starting up Oz, an artisan bakery in Alton, Illinois.
“We learned very quickly that the paycheck is really the hook for most students to achieve the goals of their individualized educational plans we construct with them and their parents or the court system,” Mark White said.
Their budding business, profiled in The Telegraph, is the classroom, laboratory and funding source for their efforts to bring at-risk kids into the mainstream.
“Baking provides a job which is critical because it’s the only way to reach kids who have given up on any other type of learning,” Mark White said. “After a while, they get satisfaction once they realize that it’s their own skill that has created the products.”
To inspire their students to dream, the bakery’s name makes a deliberate reference to the perennially favorite book and movie.
“Oz is a place to go to find yourself,” Jennifer White said. “Everybody has got the ruby slippers, but you have to go out into the world to find out what’s inside you.”
So next time somebody spouts about how the justification for some new offense is “for the children,” contrast it with the Jennifer and Mark White, and ask them whether taking drop-outs and expelled children and giving them a place where they can find that there is a place for them in society does greater good. And then ask them how much money they plan to waste on their latest campaign, when the Whites are constrained to make this work on their own.
If you happen to be anywhere near Alton, Illinois, you might want to stop by the Oz Artisan Bakery at Mississippi Landing. Word is that the baked goods are excellent, and the benefits for kids aren’t too shabby either. Better still, if you want to actually do something for the children yourself, I’m sure Jennifer and Mark would appreciate any outside help to fund this venture. After all, it’s for the children.
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Whether gifted or talented or special ed., molds do not work, in my subversive opinion. School is programmed and boring to kids for good reason. Most of them are ready to do adult work among adults, and to be contributors instead of consumers, many years earlier than our lock-step school systems let them.
Abridging freedoms in the name of the children upsets me too.
With the industrial revolution, there was a decline in individual craftsmen and with that, a decline in apprenticeships. Given the state of education around the country (and the world), many kids are better off being butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers early than doing the minimal for a high school diploma.
Thanks for mentioning this story.
Glad you pointed this out. I work in Juvenile Court sometimes but have considered giving it up as I just can’t take the way parental rights can be terminated cavalierly on the word of HHS case managers whose word shouldn’t be used to affect the life of a dog. Not all, or even most, are this way, but the few that are have a lot of power as their word is typically taken as given completely truthfully and “for the kids.”
I went to a Guardian Ad Litem training session and they described the book Jeopardy in the Courtroom (about the reliability of child testimony) as something that came “from the other side.” In other words, the training, which was supposed to be “for the children” was so biased that it assumed that any attempts to determine if the kids were being truthful was against them.
In short, the presumption of guilt frequently applies in Juvenile Court and Nurse Ratched is often thought of as Florence Nightengale, so automatically good that she can’t be afraid to do bad things “for the children.”