I Really Don't Care About Those Kids!

I really don’t care about those kids!

I really don't care about those kids!

I really live to see my children thrive!

F*#%$ those poor minority kids whose parents don't work!

The statements above reflect the way many of us react when we judge neighborhood schools, step into the voting booth, and validate school policy in the United States today. Our world has fallen into the trap of "The Law Of Diminishing Capacity."

The Law of Diminishing Capacity conditions us that it "is enough" to care deeply about our own children. It is a law that releases our social consciousness from caring about any child other than our own. The law allows us to judge those in the food bank line and pass by a failing neighborhood school serving hundreds- as we drive our children to a program that cares for them well.

This law, I'm convinced is the root of everything that is wrong with education today. It smacks against social norms from a bygone day when the village really believed … that, “it takes a village to raise every child.”

This law has perpetuated Dr. Cornel Wests’ idea that “Race Matters” and pressed the divide of Kozol’s “Savage Inequalities” to a gargantuan state.

I will always remember introducing the idea of “The Law of Diminishing Capacity” (I believe it is an Andy Kelly original) to the student body at Procter R. Hug High School in Reno, NV several years ago. We were experiencing an increase in racial tension between the “TJ’s” (a Hispanic gang) and a group of our African American students. You could have heard a proverbial pen drop in the gym that day when I played out an image of seeing a small child alongside the freeway, late at night. I asked the kids how many of them would stop and help? Every hand in the gym went to the ceiling. I changed the variable of the child on the side of the road….first, a little older, dressed differently, etc. I finally got to the point when most would NOT stop. I think it was the description of the Hispanic teenager in pleated “Dickies” and a blue pressed shirt. Or it might have been the African American boy with the dew rag smoking “something.”

The point is-there comes a point when high school kids quit responding compassionately to other young people. Honestly, high school kids are sometimes the MOST compassionate.

I have since played this scenario out many times to mixed groups of adults and what I have found is that we are way more judgmental than the kids. We sometimes make the decision not to stop and help because of race. We judge based on appearance first, substance second. We are concerned chiefly with our own welfare, the welfare of our children and little else.

I can’t imagine how different the parable of “The Good Samaritan” would have played out in the book of Luke if all the passersby had been Levites. In the United States, we have become a community of Levites, not willing to walk out of our way to lend a hand.  The Law of Diminishing Capacity gives us permission to behave just as the Levite in the story did, crossing to the other side of the road and ignoring the one in need.

The Law of Diminishing Capacity in terms of how it relates to schooling may be the biggest detriment we have ever created. We as parents typically care deeply about the kind of education our kids receive. Typically that is where it stops. We may engage with other people who look mostly like us and who shop at similar stores. But rarely do we as citizens of this great country care deeply about ALL kids.

Can you imagine? What if the only thing that changed in the communities of Seattle or Reno or Washington D.C. was that every adult started caring just as much for ALL kids as they care for their own. We would transform schools overnight! We could eradicate the Law of Diminishing Capacity (at least in the school house). What would happen if I cared that each student had a great teacher, not just my own? What would happen if I cared that every student graduated college ready, not just my own? What if instead of debating charter schools vs. public schools we just committed to making all schools excellent? What if every student in America had access to the same kind of education that our President and the First Lady can afford for Sasha and Malia?

My dream is that in my lifetime I will be able to be part of the disproving and disengagement from the Law of Diminishing Capacity. I believe that addressing our schools with the vision of creating a system where every school is just as good as the school my child goes will ultimately allow us to fix the system and show that we believe in the potential of each and every child in America. This is the civil rights issue of my generation.