Broken windows, shattered dreams.

There has been a rash of vandalism on our street this week. A few of our neighbors have had passenger windows shattered or sideview mirrors broken off. It is truly an act of pointless vandalism. Nothing stolen, just broken. It makes me feel so hurt, like the boy in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close who can't understand why someone who has never met his Dad would run a plane into a building and kill his Dad, or how Carl described the first time he experienced and understood meanness as a kindergartener and just wondered "why would anyone do that?" When pointless meanness exists in the world, it shows we must have really failed someone along the way.

I have started listening to Detroit: A Biography by Scott Martelle and in the preface he points out that 3/4 freshmen in Detroit Public Schools will flunk or drop out. That's 75%! 75% is passing in most schools, so we are passing at the failing test. We have succeeded in failing these children. It breaks my heart, but I have no idea how to help.

Here I am in my Detroit home feeling helpless and having no idea how to help this problem. How do we motivate kids to care about school? How do we improve the curriculum on such a small budget? How do we change a culture of dropping out to one of finishing and going on to higher education? How do you foster a respect for strangers? How? How? How? If anyone has any suggestions, I am open to them. I am ready to take action, I just don't know how. And I'm not talking about vigilante justice here. We need to travel up the river to find out where all the dead are coming from, instead of just burying the bodies.