Three
years ago today FB says I posted this: "Education is a weapon, whose
effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed".
--Joseph Stalin.
The 50-something white guy from LA eating next to me at the Volcano market said he loved riding his bike up Wright Road. I told him there's a great hike at the end, closed off, but you walk through the gate. "I'm too scared of being shot," he said. This isn't like LA, I said. He turned his intense brown eyes at me and said, "I teach in Ka`u. I used to teach in Compton." It's like Mississippi here in the schools," he said. "They've got resources in Hilo, but out here...I deal with 4th generation meth addicts." He said the reading levels, except for 10% of the kids, were exceedingly low. (Later, he added that you can't grow good weed here because you need to read to figure out how.) In Compton, they'd given him a group of Marshallese students, put them in the music room. In half a year, he'd gotten their reading up one full grade level. How'd he end up here? Got fired. "Actually, this isn't going to sound good, but I got fired in Ka`u, too." He's in a documentary, the history teacher they talk about. Knew how to deal with gang members (the criminal code) and with drug users ("I used drugs, I know how to talk to them"). "Even the gang members wouldn't send their kids to school with drugs in Compton; they knew which schools not to send them to." Said he makes $250 a day teaching in Ka`u; his students can make $200 a day harvesting Mac nuts. "So who are we to talk to them?" I asked about the suicide rate. It all gets covered up, but you can figure things out. He worked in Compton, after all. "What's going to kill everything is robots." I reached out to shake his hand and noticed the hand sanitizer placed on the table in front of us. Bryant used the sanitizer before shaking. "But the idiot's got it all under control," he said as a kind of farewell. "Have a good day," he grinned.
The 50-something white guy from LA eating next to me at the Volcano market said he loved riding his bike up Wright Road. I told him there's a great hike at the end, closed off, but you walk through the gate. "I'm too scared of being shot," he said. This isn't like LA, I said. He turned his intense brown eyes at me and said, "I teach in Ka`u. I used to teach in Compton." It's like Mississippi here in the schools," he said. "They've got resources in Hilo, but out here...I deal with 4th generation meth addicts." He said the reading levels, except for 10% of the kids, were exceedingly low. (Later, he added that you can't grow good weed here because you need to read to figure out how.) In Compton, they'd given him a group of Marshallese students, put them in the music room. In half a year, he'd gotten their reading up one full grade level. How'd he end up here? Got fired. "Actually, this isn't going to sound good, but I got fired in Ka`u, too." He's in a documentary, the history teacher they talk about. Knew how to deal with gang members (the criminal code) and with drug users ("I used drugs, I know how to talk to them"). "Even the gang members wouldn't send their kids to school with drugs in Compton; they knew which schools not to send them to." Said he makes $250 a day teaching in Ka`u; his students can make $200 a day harvesting Mac nuts. "So who are we to talk to them?" I asked about the suicide rate. It all gets covered up, but you can figure things out. He worked in Compton, after all. "What's going to kill everything is robots." I reached out to shake his hand and noticed the hand sanitizer placed on the table in front of us. Bryant used the sanitizer before shaking. "But the idiot's got it all under control," he said as a kind of farewell. "Have a good day," he grinned.
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