Perry,
Almost a decade ago I wrote the attached thoughts about the possibility of using retired athletic coaches and military drill sergeants to teach black males. I had in mind those who are incarcerated or those who by behavior, lack of skills, societal inequity, and confusion are predisposed to incarceration. The attachment was never widely circulated because I didn't know the magnitude of the multi-billion dollar prison budgets. Today, we know that the money is there. What is needed now are some creative approaches and the moral and political WILL!!
Best regards,
David
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COACHES AND SERGEANTS
Almost daily we bemoan the embarrassing behavior of past and present black sports icons because of the negative influence that behavior has on young people, especially young black males. If, however, we could look past the uncomfortable public spectacles that these men too often present, we might see interesting commonalities in how they rose to prominence in the first place. There were usually distinct patterns in the way these men succeeded in sports and some of them might be worth replicating in our attempts to help other young African American males.
En route to celebrity these men somehow avoided pitfalls that swallowed up thousands of their peers. How did they do it? Ostensibly, it was their extraordinary athletic talents, but physical attributes are distributed without regard to race or class. Yet, from elementary school sports through the professional ranks, working class black males are disproportionately successful. More than physical skills are at work here. There is a powerful combination of raw talent, motivation, societal reinforcements, media rôle models, luck, and, most important, notable mentors.
The influence of key mentors (namely, athletic coaches) warrants serious examination. How can they consistently assemble successful teams using players from neighborhoods where success of any kind is rare? One of the best examples of these "miracle workers" is Robert Shannon, former head football coach at East St. Louis Senior High School in East St. Louis, Illinois. In a predominantly black city where social and economic problems seem innumerable, his teams won six state-wide championships in fifteen years! All of the championships were at the highest level of competition in Illinois. We need to hear from results-getting specialists like Shannon who can help us retrieve a generation of young black men.
Persuasive new approaches are crucial at this time because too many Americans are in the early stages of "compassion fatigue" or, even worse, feel despair at the enormity of the problems facing young black males. Their attitudes are not surprising because the statistics are sufficient to deaden the morale of the most optimistic citizens. Approximately one-third of black males in their twenties are under criminal justice supervision; "casualty rates" in certain urban areas read like those of a war zone; and several school systems report that upwards of three quarters of their African American male students earn less than a C- average. Moreover, many of those who do excel academically are reviled for "acting white."
Even in the face of these statistics, athletic coaches and military drill sergeants have been amazingly successful in working with young black males. Some of their solutions must be applicable to problems outside athletics and the military.
Coaches know something about motivation that the rest of us don't because they have guided hundreds of thousands of young black males to excellence in amateur and professional sports.
Athletic success has delivered thousands from "the Projects," gangs, drugs and, in the case of Mike Tyson, from the reformatory. These men weren't saved by some abstract Greco-Roman ideal of sports. They were directed by human beings, motivated by influential persons, disciplined by individuals they respected, spoken to and heard by men who could communicate with them. More often than not, those men were athletic coaches who showed these young men the positive relationships between basic talent, practice, discipline, teamwork, persistence, and ultimate reward.
Drill sergeants have been the U. S. military's counterparts to athletic coaches. They, too, have guided hundreds of thousands of African American males toward productive lives. And before the All-Volunteer Army, the raw material presented to drill sergeants was often rougher than that which high school coaches confronted. Even so, sergeants like coaches, have been remarkably effective, and we need to learn from them.
Compared to sports, the military is almost invisible to the American public. That unfamiliarity might breed skepticism that military life can yield models for black male development, but close examination suggests it can help. Beyond the enviable record of the drill sergeants and their enlisted men, the military boasts forty black generals and admirals as well as some 19,000 African American officers. No civilian industry offers comparable statistics of success.
How would we involve these men who are so used to barking orders that are instantly obeyed in educating these youngsters? After all, the young men we want to help aren't trying to make an athletic team, and definitely haven't been drafted into the military. Furthermore, who would pay these coaches and sergeants?
First, we should approach retired coaches and drill sergeants and offer to place them in no-nonsense environments like the ones they know or have known. This time their primary objectives would be to educate young men instead of coaching and drilling them. The "no-nonsense environments" would be the educational units of prisons and other correctional facilities. Maybe foundations, sports organizations or professional athletes, could financially support this effort and, where necessary, help finance retraining of the coaches and sergeants. It would be unfair to expect them to relive the frustrations so poignantly described by Gerald Kimble, a former football coach at Southern University in Louisiana: "We have done so much with so little that we are expected to do everything with nothing."
Prisons and correctional facilities are suggested because that is where to find hundreds of thousands of young black males. Many of these inmates dropped out of school, are functionally illiterate, and were once athletes. All correctional facilities have (or are supposed to have) educational programs.
In their new rôles as educators, the coaches and sergeants could offer incentives for self improvement. Where appropriate, they might even recommend reduced time for inmates who earn a graduate equivalency diploma (G.E.D.), learn a skill or pass college courses.
Who would hire these ex-cons once they are out? Maybe the state in which they served their time could experiment with hiring former offenders who come highly recommended. And after a probationary period of exemplary performance, others might be interested in hiring them.