What If...
What if you were a wealthy philanthropist who could write a $100 million check to fund any infrastructure or public project in Brooklyn? What would it be? A selective high school to rival Stuyvesant in Manhattan? Hundreds more patrol officers on the police force? A monorail above Atlantic Avenue? Let your imagination run wild.
What if you were a wealthy philanthropist who could write a $100 million check to fund any infrastructure or public project in Brooklyn? What would it be? A selective high school to rival Stuyvesant in Manhattan? Hundreds more patrol officers on the police force? A monorail above Atlantic Avenue? Let your imagination run wild.
There is actually a new selective high school in Brooklyn named Brooklyn Latin. It’s specialized, like Stuy and Tech, which means you need to take an exam, but it is much smaller and the focus is on the humanities and progressive teaching. This is its first year. Check out the profile here at Inside Schools: http://www.insideschools.org/fs/school_profile.php?id=1530
I saw really fun diversity training at Viacom when I was there.
I think all public and private schools should start from day one in kindergarten with “diversity training” in the form of incorporating different cultures, customs, histories, etc, in everyday teaching, instead of making it somehow separate, or special or exotic and other. If, for example, black history is only taught in Feb. during Black History Month, I fail to see how any student, black, white or otherwise, can help but feel that black history is not important or rich enough to rate being taught as a part of world or American history during the rest of the year. What about all the cultures that haven’t even been given a “history month”? Of course, all of this will mean fixing way back before it even gets to the classroom. Educators need to be taught, textbooks need to be written or re-written, and everyone concerned needs to realize that we live in a big world made up of so more than white middleclass Christian Americans.
Seems to me a lot of diversity training in later life just either accentuates our differences or makes excuses for someone not coming up to standards. I don’t think this does anyone any good, and it’s almost too late. Get ’em while they are young, and have kids growing up learning as much as possible about the whole wide world.
PS – I am not advocating service jobs as the solution to dead end jobs, unemployment or racism. I want us to be doctors, lawyers, Wall St. wizzes, and rocket scientists. But the reality is that not everyone can or will. Better to be a highly paid sales associate at Chanel or a highly paid skilled cabinetmaker, or even a highly paid butler, than a part time cashier at Wal Mart, not even able to make ends meet. If training to make that possible appealed to people, it would be great to have it available.
i would upgrade every police/fire street corner station to ensure the buttons work and install street camera’s throughout bedstuy, clinton hill, and fort greene to make those streets somewhat safer.
I think the people who need the training are those members of the upper classes (or any class for that matter) who don’t appreciate cultures other than their own. Diversity training is important. And then kids today who want to succeed should get a shot at having a connection with a strong role model so that they stay in school. Jobs training for the service industries is only going to take people so far in this world.
I have 2 goals, both of which would cost much more than 100MM, but here goes:
1. Along with 12:18’s architectural think tank for affordable housing idea, I’d put the money into starting some kind of venture capital development specifically for building affordable housing that is cost effective, esthetically pleasing, and well built. While new construction would probably constitute the bulk of it, I would also try whenever possible to use existing structures and keep the traditional feel of brownstone Brooklyn in mind. I think it would be relatively easy to come up with good design, I would spend as much as needed in hiring scrupulously honest and dedicated oversight people who would make sure corners were not cut in terms of materials and construction. As we have seen over and over, new construction, especially for the middle classes and below is shoddily built and usually fugly as all get out. This should not be the case.
My second idea, and this one may be even more close to my heart in terms of “if I’m ever rich, I would…..” I would buy a large building, a school or factory building somewhere easily accessible to public transportation, and open a school training young adults and up in age, for real jobs with real possibilities for a living wage and a chance for upward mobility.
Service jobs have been relegated to the barely educated and to those without any other skills. Our communities are full of people who cannot, or will not be steered into high paying professions. Not everyone is able to go to a good college, or even any kind of college. But a good living can be made in the building trades, and in other service industries such as sales and the restaurant industry. You don’t find too many people of color in high end retail sales, or as wait staff in expensive restaurants. These are good jobs making good money. Part of that is institutionalized racism, and part is because there is no training available, and few existing mentors to bring younger people along, plus an attitude that it is somehow above us now. My school would train people how to speak, dress, comport themselves, learn about food and wines, and other job specific skills, and how to wait on people in high end retail and food industries. Training in these areas, besides providing well paying jobs, can lead into management and entrepenurial and teaching/mentoring jobs. I would also train master carpenters, furniture makers, and other skilled building finishing trades.
Some may bitch that people of color do not need to learn how to be good servants again, but there in nothing servile in working in the higher echelons of the economy, and the skills learned can be used in many other ways. If you don’t have the education, or the means of egress into the boardroom of a Fortune 500 company, it’s better to be the well paid personal staff in the executive dining suite, than slinging burgers at Micky D’s. There’s nothing servile or dishonorable about that.
My school would be open to anyone of any background. I fully expect to get reamed for this idea from people who see in it a little too much G.W. Carver, and not enough W.E.B. DuBois, open for debate.
Second Avenue subway through Dumbo, Cobble Hill West, Red Hook, Sunset Park. Anything left over, I’d knock down those hideous Robert Moses towers off Cadman Plaza and restore the Heights street grid.
Come to think of it, none of this would be an enormous public good beyond making me happy. Maybe it’s good that I don’t have $100M lying around.
My kid goes to Stuy and wishes he’d selected Brooklyn Tech. Great programs but less high pressure competition. They need to lose the drill presses and get some computers though. It’s 2006, not 1956.
I like the idea of lifting up some of the really desparate neighborhoods with cleaner, better schools, decent grocery store and some jobs. Subsidize businesses to open there who need unskilled to semi skilled labor.
Re: Brooklyn Tech – it also has some extremely wealthy alums (e.g. Charles Wang) who provided the athletic field and another person whose name escapes me who donated several million dollars to the school. I think they may have more famous, rich alums than Stuy. Also, Please don’t flame about trustfunders – I assume you never had to pick a school for your child. NYC public high schools are no laughing matter and you don’t put your kid into just any school without doing your homework. Brooklyn Tech is an extremely large school and many kids do not do well in that kind of environment.