A Man For All Seasons

For John, BLUF:  Human problems are as old as the human race.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Sir Thomas More

Happy Birthday

Here is a quote that is as timely todzy as it was back in the time of Henry VIII:

For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.

Here is an indication of the impact of education on incarceration, from The san Jose Mercury News, from 15 May 2014:

The link between a poor education and incarcaration is borne out in data. Dropouts are 3.5 times more likely to be arrested than high school graduates. Nationally, 68 percent of all males in prison do not have a high school diploma. Only 20 percent of California inmates demonstrate a basic level of literacy, and the average offender reads at an eighth grade level.

These numbers vary by source.  From the US Census Bureau, back in 2011, 58 percent of young black men in prison did not complete high school while 41 percent of young white men in prison did not.  From the 19 March 2018 issue of the SL Spotlight (Southern Lehigh School District, Pennszylvania), we have this:

Of all of the males in federal and state prisons, 80 percent do not have a high school diploma. There is a direct correlation with a lack of high school education and incarceration.  One in ten male dropouts between the ages of 16 to 24 are either in prison or in juvenile detention.

There are more studies, but I will save that research for the read.

The point for all of us to ponder, and to act on, is that we have to work on helping our young citizens complete high school and move on to productive jobs and lives.

One could rgue that this is not corrolation, but only coincidence.  We can take time to study this, but I would suggest that there are steps we could take now.

We can ask what is it we might be doing wrong?  I would suggest that part of it is not meeting the educational needs of the students.  One of the things might be the lack of technical high school slots.  Given that we can't expand Greater Lowell Technical High School it may mean that the Great and General Court may need to do something truly radical and adjust the Vocational School bountries to allow new schools to be built, with the hope of providing courses of study that attract their interest and lead to productive work lives.

Happy Birthday, Saint Thomas More.

Regards  —  Cliff