three cups of tea, education, and the urban city

I recently finished Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson. And it is a must read for everyone. The book is about one man’s journey to bring a school to a poor community in Pakistan. The book is inspiring. It gives life to the people of Pakistan, to Afghanistan, and the Middle East. It gives a hope for peace that is not through war, power, and death, but through a road less traveled.

The book gives an alternative view to the way life has been lived out since 9/11. It’s a view that involves less U.S. taxpayer money, less death, less destruction of towns and villages in Iraq and Afghanistan, and less fear of terrorism.

Just as the U.S. wages war in the Middle East, the country been raging war domestically since it’s conception. Cities such as Detroit, MI and Gary, IN, and in poorer neighborhoods in cities such as Chicago or Boston were not always poor, dangerous, and places to avoid rather than seek. All these cities have history. Many of them can trace the growth of unrest from their beginnings, to the industrial revolution, to events as recent as white flight around the middle of the twentieth century. These places of course are hit hard with violence and theft. Locals who could get out did. The working class and poor just kept on working.

The alternative is education. A radical idea never used before. Education is the same thing that many people, myself included, have thought for years would help inner cities of the United States. Of course here in the U.S., compared to such places as in Three Cups of Tea, there are actually schools – for the most part. The quality and opportunity of education, of course, are vastly different. Most urban schools are given half the money that a suburban school is given. A quick Google search will confirm this. The administration? What administration? If anyone has dealt with bad school administrations in the ‘burbs or rural area – just try a poor urban community. And what about the quality of teachers? All you have to do to figure this out is to go to a teacher’s job fair in Chicago. The lines for the suburbs are out the door. For the North Side expect to wait an hour to speak to a representative from the school. For the South or West side of Chicago: wait time - zero minutes. It’s an area so desperate for good teachers, yet no one wants to work there.

Just as thousands of miles away education is an alternative to war, violence, gangs, and a life of terrorist groups, Three Cups of Tea provides a realistic alternative for those of us eager to make a difference in the U.S.. We don’t have to sentence our cities to a life of poverty, injustice, and violence. There are peaceful options, if we are brave enough to embrace them.

iraq and the middle east: part I

I’m not sure who is winning the war on terrorism. In 2003 the U.S. decided they would enter Iraq and bring “freedom” to the people. Six years later a few thousand U.S. (UK and other countries) soldiers have been killed. And this doesn’t include the ongoing war that is next door in Afghanistan. The number of casualties seem to keep climbing each month despite the claim for change and peace proposed. Hey! And, what about the people of Iraq or Afghanistan?

In the end though, Bush (or maybe better put Cheney and Rove) or the Obama Administration can’t be accused alone for starting a war or continuing a war. Like anything, the blame cannot be put on one person or country, or ideal for that matter. I recently just finished Three Cups of Tea and am in the middle of Power, Faith, and Fantasy (a history of the U.S. and the Middle East). I’ve still got to learn about the U.S. relations with the Middle East, but like anything there is history behind the U.S. relationship with Iraq. For example we can’t really understand racism in the U.S. without understanding how the history of slavery, the Civil War, Jim Crow laws, the Civil Rights era, and all the history in between have affected racism is today.

There is a lot of history with the Middle East. And amazing as it was to me, it is not all that bad. In Power, Faith, and Fantasy author Michae B. Oren does, however, string along a common theme – America’s desire to bring the same freedoms, liberties, democracy, and Westernization that they won in 1776 to the Middle East. In the book it really doesn’t seem that bad. I mean who wouldn’t want freedom, right? Well, in 1900 the freedom sounds a whole lot better than the imperialist ideals that other countries were trying to impose in the Middle East.

It is interesting to learn that oil and power were not always a means for war for the U.S. Even when the U.S. finally entered WWI they never declared war on Turkey. A peaceful means by President Wilson. I can only imagine a different outcome if Roosevelt was still president. As I finish the book I will have a second reflection on the U.S.’ involvement in the Middle East.

still kicking...

Despite my long absence from blogging this blog continues to live on. Next week: my thoughts on the Middle East and hopefully in the near future some posts from a guest blogger. Until I get a job the blogs will continue to be sporadic, but hopefully more frequent than in the past three months.

Random thought of the day: Sitting in a Borders this morning I have come to the realization that Glee has totally ruined Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing. Come on!