Another word...
Tonight I sat watching and listening to the news, and needless to say it was pretty dismal. However, two sequential stories caught my ear. They appear to be completely unrelated, but in fact, they both contain the seed that grows into almost all problems we confront.
The word I want to consider tonight is this:
Beginning
The Bible begins with the phrase "In the beginning, God created...." That, in truth, is the whole reason that the Christian and Jewish religions exist: a belief that someone did something back at the start of time. Everything else in the book owes its existence, and validity if you believe in that, to one event: The Beginning.
In the beginning...
It's rather obvious that everything has a beginning. That's largely intuitive. The why of the "beginning" isn't important, because I'm not going to talk about what the Bible says vs. the Big Bang, and, in fact, I don't happen to believe that those two ideas are contradictory. To sum up, if "God" did what he's credited with doing, the book doesn't speak to exactly how he did it.
Okay, so let's move on.
The first story of the two dealt with the idea that children slide backwards in education during the summer vacation. They not only don't learn more, they unlearn some of the things because there is no continuity. They learn to read, and then don't do that for three months, so they forget. As a theory that makes perfect sense, and I suspect most all of us either know that or have experienced it personally. You return to school and spend the first few weeks getting back into the Learning Mode...and while you're doing that, you're also having to re-install things you have, in theory, already learned.
This particular story was about an experimental program that takes children in about the third grade and provides more reading training during the summer. The key element, however, is that parents also attend. The parents are taught methods and tricks for helping their children, and then they also conduct "class" at home. It is, however, presented in the guise of parents simply spending time with their kids so it's not outwardly a "structured event." The parent side of things also urges the parents themselves to do more reading, and one dad admitted that for the first time in ten years he was actually reading a book himself.
That's pretty impressive.
The second story was actually a discussion, involving reporters from both the left and the right, politically speaking. They were to discuss the events of the past week, and the first topic raised was Ferguson.
The initial response, which happened to be from the guy representing the right, was that many of the problems were the result of police actions. He wasn't talking about the militarization and the riots. He was more focused upon the lack of information made available early, the confusion surrounding who was in charge in subsequent days and nights, and the questions and issues related to the differences between the community and the police department. Regardless of politics, those are all good questions and valid issues to discuss.
However, perhaps inadvertently, he mentioned more than once that the police failed to get out in front of the problem, both before the shooting and then thereafter. He's right.
My point is simply this:
Everything we can do to create a better beginning will be cheaper, easier, less traumatic, and more successful than anything we do later.
It's more effective and much cheaper to educate a child than it is to somehow support an uneducated child later in live. It's cheaper to instill morals and ethics and education than it can ever be to compensation for failure to do that!
While it may seem that much of this discussion deals with monetary costs, the fact is that the costs can be measured in other, more personal ways.
The costs associated with keeping a person in jail include money, but also include lost productivity, lost parents, and more lost children. They include the damages done to the individual and many others. They may include a whole life devoid of any positive outcome. A few dollars and some support during childhood begins to look like a really wise investment.
Beginnings include, or at least should include, the availability of quality pre-natal care, so life begins with a healthy child and a mother (and father) well equipped and prepared for rearing their child. Beginnings include "well-baby care" to ensure that health issues are discovered and treated before they become hospital stays and premature death.
Beginnings include parents committed to education, and a school system prepared to engage both the child AND the family in making that a reality. They include a commitment from the community so that even those who no longer have children in school understand the value of supporting the schools throughout their lives.
Beginnings include creating an environment, both at home and in the community, where children need not turn to gangs to supply the support and acceptance unavailable elsewhere.
But lest it seem that beginnings only apply to children, let me make it clear that "a good beginning" is crucial in everything.
It is a tragedy that Michael Brown died in Ferguson. However, once those shots were fired, the incident was at its beginning, and it was there that the disaster that followed was created. People watched as the young man's body remained in the street, uncovered and un-loved. There was no ambulance. There was no "emergency response." There was...nothing, nothing except some cops pacing around, including the officer who pulled the trigger. It was, all other things aside, a terrible beginning.
From there it went steadily downhill. Each step taken by officialdom made it worse.
They didn't identify the officer involved.
They didn't relate any significant explanation of what happened.
They promised to identify the officer...and then didn't.
They made no effort to interview the man walking with Brown, potentially the best witness possible.
They allowed, and even presented, tidbits that turned out to be untrue.
They created a story that Brown was a suspect in a robbery, but then admitted that the officer didn't know that.
They failed to release any information about the shooting itself.
They allowed, either overtly or tacitly, another officer to create a GoFundMe web site for the officer.
Those are known things, but there are more.
There was a story that the officer had been taken to the hospital with a broken eye socket. It's hard to know where that story started, but it took days for the department to reveal that it wasn't true. Supposedly the officer did suffer some facial contusions, but there are, or at least seem to be, no photographs that document them. BTW, that is right out of Investigation 101!
There is now a story, perhaps true or perhaps just a rumor, that there is no report filed by the officer, supposedly because he invoked his 5th amendment rights against self-incrimination. Again that may or may not be true, but the department hasn't responded to it, leaving people to wonder.
There are more examples, but the point is simple:
As terrible as the situation in Ferguson was, everything that came afterwards was fueled directly by the terrible job the Police have done getting the story out. Because of that, and historic precedents, people, both Black and white, clearly believe that there will be no justice for Michael Brown.
The disaster in Ferguson is all about Beginning. You could cite issues beginning with the makeup of the police force and the absence of black officers in a predominately black city, and that would be a valid beginning. You could cite the way the contact between officer Wilson and Michael Brown started, with the officer apparently (alleged by Brown's friend) drove up and said (yelled) through his open window "Get up on the fucking sidewalk." That too would be a valid beginning. Or, you could begin the moments after the shots were fired. That also would be a valid beginning.
In any case, just like teaching those children to read, the ultimate outcome depends upon a good beginning, and where that is absent there will be problems down the road. Fixing those problems will always be more expensive...in dollars, in lives, and in every other way. The cost to society will eventually overwhelm even the richest nation.
As the man in the old Fram commercial observed:
You can pay me now, or you can pay me later.
Later is always more expensive.
The word I want to consider tonight is this:
Beginning
The Bible begins with the phrase "In the beginning, God created...." That, in truth, is the whole reason that the Christian and Jewish religions exist: a belief that someone did something back at the start of time. Everything else in the book owes its existence, and validity if you believe in that, to one event: The Beginning.
In the beginning...
It's rather obvious that everything has a beginning. That's largely intuitive. The why of the "beginning" isn't important, because I'm not going to talk about what the Bible says vs. the Big Bang, and, in fact, I don't happen to believe that those two ideas are contradictory. To sum up, if "God" did what he's credited with doing, the book doesn't speak to exactly how he did it.
Okay, so let's move on.
The first story of the two dealt with the idea that children slide backwards in education during the summer vacation. They not only don't learn more, they unlearn some of the things because there is no continuity. They learn to read, and then don't do that for three months, so they forget. As a theory that makes perfect sense, and I suspect most all of us either know that or have experienced it personally. You return to school and spend the first few weeks getting back into the Learning Mode...and while you're doing that, you're also having to re-install things you have, in theory, already learned.
This particular story was about an experimental program that takes children in about the third grade and provides more reading training during the summer. The key element, however, is that parents also attend. The parents are taught methods and tricks for helping their children, and then they also conduct "class" at home. It is, however, presented in the guise of parents simply spending time with their kids so it's not outwardly a "structured event." The parent side of things also urges the parents themselves to do more reading, and one dad admitted that for the first time in ten years he was actually reading a book himself.
That's pretty impressive.
The second story was actually a discussion, involving reporters from both the left and the right, politically speaking. They were to discuss the events of the past week, and the first topic raised was Ferguson.
The initial response, which happened to be from the guy representing the right, was that many of the problems were the result of police actions. He wasn't talking about the militarization and the riots. He was more focused upon the lack of information made available early, the confusion surrounding who was in charge in subsequent days and nights, and the questions and issues related to the differences between the community and the police department. Regardless of politics, those are all good questions and valid issues to discuss.
However, perhaps inadvertently, he mentioned more than once that the police failed to get out in front of the problem, both before the shooting and then thereafter. He's right.
My point is simply this:
Everything we can do to create a better beginning will be cheaper, easier, less traumatic, and more successful than anything we do later.
It's more effective and much cheaper to educate a child than it is to somehow support an uneducated child later in live. It's cheaper to instill morals and ethics and education than it can ever be to compensation for failure to do that!
While it may seem that much of this discussion deals with monetary costs, the fact is that the costs can be measured in other, more personal ways.
The costs associated with keeping a person in jail include money, but also include lost productivity, lost parents, and more lost children. They include the damages done to the individual and many others. They may include a whole life devoid of any positive outcome. A few dollars and some support during childhood begins to look like a really wise investment.
Beginnings include, or at least should include, the availability of quality pre-natal care, so life begins with a healthy child and a mother (and father) well equipped and prepared for rearing their child. Beginnings include "well-baby care" to ensure that health issues are discovered and treated before they become hospital stays and premature death.
Beginnings include parents committed to education, and a school system prepared to engage both the child AND the family in making that a reality. They include a commitment from the community so that even those who no longer have children in school understand the value of supporting the schools throughout their lives.
Beginnings include creating an environment, both at home and in the community, where children need not turn to gangs to supply the support and acceptance unavailable elsewhere.
But lest it seem that beginnings only apply to children, let me make it clear that "a good beginning" is crucial in everything.
It is a tragedy that Michael Brown died in Ferguson. However, once those shots were fired, the incident was at its beginning, and it was there that the disaster that followed was created. People watched as the young man's body remained in the street, uncovered and un-loved. There was no ambulance. There was no "emergency response." There was...nothing, nothing except some cops pacing around, including the officer who pulled the trigger. It was, all other things aside, a terrible beginning.
From there it went steadily downhill. Each step taken by officialdom made it worse.
They didn't identify the officer involved.
They didn't relate any significant explanation of what happened.
They promised to identify the officer...and then didn't.
They made no effort to interview the man walking with Brown, potentially the best witness possible.
They allowed, and even presented, tidbits that turned out to be untrue.
They created a story that Brown was a suspect in a robbery, but then admitted that the officer didn't know that.
They failed to release any information about the shooting itself.
They allowed, either overtly or tacitly, another officer to create a GoFundMe web site for the officer.
Those are known things, but there are more.
There was a story that the officer had been taken to the hospital with a broken eye socket. It's hard to know where that story started, but it took days for the department to reveal that it wasn't true. Supposedly the officer did suffer some facial contusions, but there are, or at least seem to be, no photographs that document them. BTW, that is right out of Investigation 101!
There is now a story, perhaps true or perhaps just a rumor, that there is no report filed by the officer, supposedly because he invoked his 5th amendment rights against self-incrimination. Again that may or may not be true, but the department hasn't responded to it, leaving people to wonder.
There are more examples, but the point is simple:
As terrible as the situation in Ferguson was, everything that came afterwards was fueled directly by the terrible job the Police have done getting the story out. Because of that, and historic precedents, people, both Black and white, clearly believe that there will be no justice for Michael Brown.
The disaster in Ferguson is all about Beginning. You could cite issues beginning with the makeup of the police force and the absence of black officers in a predominately black city, and that would be a valid beginning. You could cite the way the contact between officer Wilson and Michael Brown started, with the officer apparently (alleged by Brown's friend) drove up and said (yelled) through his open window "Get up on the fucking sidewalk." That too would be a valid beginning. Or, you could begin the moments after the shots were fired. That also would be a valid beginning.
In any case, just like teaching those children to read, the ultimate outcome depends upon a good beginning, and where that is absent there will be problems down the road. Fixing those problems will always be more expensive...in dollars, in lives, and in every other way. The cost to society will eventually overwhelm even the richest nation.
As the man in the old Fram commercial observed:
You can pay me now, or you can pay me later.
Later is always more expensive.