education reform

i'm watching a clip of the Oprah Show with Mark Zuckerberg. The majority of you know that he is one of the founders of Facebook, and also one of the 2 youngest richest people on the list.

so many of you probably know that he pledged a donation of $100 million to New Jersey schools.

other than that, today's Chicago RedEye ran a feature on the richest Chicagoans... not one of them seems to have made a significant pledge to Chicago's school system, though it is VERY clear that the city could benefit from such a donation.

Chicago's statistics show a huge, sprawling city full of crime and the education rates are anything but stellar. I regularly read stories about kids who get out of their high school classes for the day and congregate in Uptown to perpetuate assorted gang rival battles. Some are so minor that they're never noticed. Others draw a lot of attention from concerned neighbors who just want to live peacefully in their multi-block area, sandwiched between a number of relatively safe and profitable neighborhoods. People who do not live in Uptown think that it's just as bad as the decades old reputation of the Chicago South Side. Sadly, those people aren't entirely incorrect. Uptown is one of my favorite neighborhoods in the city. It has some of the best and oldest architecture, and it is all going to waste with graffiti and vandalism and just general negative loitering of smarmy people who are most always up to no good.

Now that Mayor Daley's coveted spot is going to be available, maybe some of those among Chicago's "richest" should start coughing up some money, either to run for the mayoral office themselves or at least to put some fire power behind a candidate of their choice.

After all, this city desperately needs something new. Some hope, some assurance that things have a chance of working out for the best someday. Allowing the city's future leaders (a.k.a. the kids who are being churned out by the public schools) to go uneducated, uninformed, unsupported.... is not only an injustice to the people who support those who make the decisions; it is a crime against humanity.