Teens on the Edge
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This book--a collection of essays and author commentary--can be read from several perspectives. The essays themselves are written by incarcerated teenagers (17 years old--minimum age for GED training--to 18 years) who face a critical juncture in their journey through life. In 1787 Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to James Madison this obiter dictum, 'Educate and inform the whole mass of people. Enable them to see that it is to their interest to preserve peace and order...They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.'* After thirty years in public education, fifteen years as a teacher/administrator of juvenile court schools, it is my conviction we must redouble our efforts to educate and inform if we are to heal a country plagued by gangs who can't find a way to coexist and are doggedly determined to codestruct. Each one of their stories is both unique and alarmingly the same. They reveal experiences that most of us cannot imagine or would wish upon anyone we know. These stories of abuse, neglect, abandonment, and more, reveal a harsh world: unfiltered and raw; a life with diffuse and often distorted perspectives of the familiar, the new, and the unknown. Reading these essays is to bear witness to and participate in the lives of these youngsters, lives they have been forced to live convulsively, compulsively, and beyond reason or meaning. Briefly, their lives may become our lives, as we are confronted with their unhealthy and often self-negating and selfdestructive perceptions of how life is. These stories may force us to search deeply into the meaning of our own lives and those of our children; and we may feel compelled to 'complete' their stories in our own mind. Each story has something meaningful to convey to us, as their childish, immature, desperate, and unfiltered voices call out to us for a moment--and then disappear, becoming as lost as these youths appear to be. These stories represent not so much failed children as they do failed parents, failed communities, failed social institutions, and failures to recognize desperate cries for help. For many teenagers, their painful cries began as young as four or five years of age, when their anti-social behavior first began to manifest itself. These pleas were often met with a brusque, knee-jerk reaction that said: 'Come back when you are older and become a real threat to our well being; then we will deal with you.' Sadly, this is the point at which the youngsters in the book find themselves. These teenage girls and boys are now studying for the GED (Graduate Equivalent Degree). As they struggle with the demands of the classroom, their thoughts wander to life on 'the streets' and to the bizarre yet enticing workings of that dark underbelly of society. This book vividly explores the full spectrum of the human drama as it manifests in the chilling and mysterious world of juvenile crime. The President's Council of Economic Advisers' newly released statistics indicate the nation is making gains regarding the wellbeing of our youth. Less than 2 percent of children go hungry in a year, children who live in poverty are visiting doctors more often, and the number of children living in crowded housing dropped from 9 percent in l978 to 6 percent in l997. Yet these gains have not prevented our communities from experiencing a social breakdown in many critical areas. Children are progressively exposed to readily available and easily accessed drugs, violence is more prevalent, more youth are being incarcerated, and increasing numbers will become parents before they complete school. 'Improving the odds for children in low-income communities will require many things including greater access to supports that all families need to raise kids successfully-employment opportunities for parents, quality health care, formal and informal networks of adults...vibrant religious institutions, organized recreation, and safe streets...But of all the community institutions that help children become capable adults, perhaps none is more important than school' (The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Kids Count Data Book, l997). Moreover, it is becoming increasingly clear that children are desperately dependent on their parents for guidance, and perhaps most importantly expectations. If parents set low standards for their children it is extremely difficult to offset the ill effects of this. Robert J. Samuelson (Newsweek, 2-23-98) writes that the investments 'that really count for children come from parents: love and security, discipline and instruction, a sense of worth. Being rich is no guarantee that parents will provide these; being poor is no indicator that they won't. But large federal programs, whatever their benefits, can't undo parental failure. Nor can they offset the ill effects of family breakdown. To think otherwise sanctions the behaviors that put children at risk.' We must be careful when we weigh the statistics and rhetoric concerning these children that we do not become too pessimistic about the prospects for some and avoid unwarranted complacency about others. It is a complicated yet captivating perplexity quacunque via data (whichever way you take it).
*Daniel B. Baker, Power Quotes, Visible Ink Press, l992
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About the Book
Juvenile crime in America today is a threat to every one of us. It is the most discussed, feared, and blatantly misunderstood phenomenon confronting communities throughout the U.S.A. Who listens to our troubled youth in America today? In their attitudes and often anti-social behaviors, today's young people cry out for help, desperate for someone to listen to them. This book is powerfully focused on listening to the previously silent voices of teens in detention. Incarcerated teenagers (17 and 18 years of age, female and male, all races and ethnic backgrounds) face a critical juncture in their frenetic journey through life. This is their story in their own words. Each story is unique yet alarmingly the same. Almost with One Voice these troubled teens reveal their stories of abuse, neglect and abandonment, struggling to find their place in the harsh world in which they find themselves. These autobiographies represent not so much their failures as ours: parents, educators, communities, social institutions. All have failed to recognize the desperate cries for help from these youths, which are often manifested in various and disturbing disguises. These essays are by teens who are studying for the GED [Graduate Equivalent Degree]. The author, their instructor, invited them to tell their story in their own faltering, often brutally blunt words. To read these thirty-five+ raw, blunt essays is to bear witness to and participate in their troubled world of abuse, drugs, rampant sex, and violence. The author's commentary provides both background and illuminating insight into the core problem: theirs and society's. The aim of the book is to awaken the profound need for societal involvement in these troubled teens so that we can begin to focus more profoundly on how to help them and eradicate or at least lessen the alarming problem of juvenile crime in America. TEENS ON THE EDGE offers a profound and intimate examination of the core factors involved in juvenile crime and violence. American psychological and financial survival are at stake in resolving this problem. Our prisons are full of offenders who were themselves victims of severe childhood trauma or torture. While most children who endure abuse or neglect mature into law-abiding adults, the ones who do not become the menace so feared by the community, sapping it of billions of dollars in the process. Many current books focus on various perspectives of dysfunctional families, troubled teens, child abuse, and youth violence and crime in America. This book complements them all, but is unique in combining all of the above phenomena into one powerful book. No academic study or professional analyses have the same profound impact as listening to the troubled youths themselves!
About the Author
Leonard Robinson, a licensed teacher and school administrator in Nevada, has had over thirty years of direct involvement with education, acquiring a vast knowledge of the subject of this book. For over fifteen years he worked directly with the Nevada court system serving as both school principal and teacher for Clark County. Recipient of the Distinguished Service Award from the Clark County School District, Robinson also received a statewide Nevada Proclamation declaring October 23, l987, Leonard Robinson Day from Governor Richard Bryan who presently serves as United States Senator. He has letters of commendation from the Director of Juvenile Court Services and the Superintendent of Schools, Clark County, Nevada. The State Parent/Teacher Association (PTA) awarded him a lifetime membership in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the welfare of children and youth in Nevada. Gene Feher, Executive Director of the National Juvenile Detention Association (NJDA) from l981 to l985 and presently a Trainer and Consultant for them writes in the book's preface, 'He is demanding, energetic, and an outspoken advocate for necessary diversification and change!'