LESSONS FROM CHILDREN ON THE FRONT LINES OF TERROR

Recently, I was reading a student's journal about his community service.

In it, he described an inner-city middle-school child whom he tutored and
whose uncle had been shot and killed the year before.

My student reflected on a parallel universe of violence-filled streets with
which he was totally unfamiliar.

His words reaffirmed the lessons that I, too, have gleaned from the
children of inner-city Richmond, Va., about vulnerability to terror and
violence that are especially relevant today.

Several years ago, two classes of my sophomore students, a colleague, and I
interviewed detained juveniles, both boys and girls, for the Richmond
juvenile court -- the results of which were published in Mending Broken
Promises: Justice for Children at Risk (Kendall/Hunt Publishing, 2000). Our
task was to ascertain the gaps in services and the unmet needs of the
children and families whom the court served.

We asked about 50 of the detained youth to construct a fictional world: the
family, schools, and neighborhoods of two imaginary juveniles, Denise and
Shorty, who got in trouble with the law. Most were enthusiastic about the
project.

We were not probing their backgrounds but making them research-team members
and giving them a chance to share what they knew.

Their answers made it clear that the children of our inner cities are no
strangers to fear and violence.

Those we interviewed were certain that Denise and Shorty,like other
inner-city children, would have known at least one homicide victim or seen
at least one murder in their neighborhood by the age of 12. They were just
as sure that Denise and Shorty heard gunfire in their neighborhoods at
least twice a month.

The boys in particular described a world in which being the target of
gunfire is simply part of life's uncertainty. Justas most people understand
that the next time they cross the street they may be hit by a car, these
boys lived with the sense that the next corner they turned mightbe their
last. The girls spoke of lives in which violence in the home occurred all
too often.

The detention center offered more security than some of them had ever known.

James Garbarino, professor of human development at Cornell, calls the
neighborhoods where these children live "war zones." Poverty, unemployment,
poor schools, low educational attainment, and fractured families are
shockingly pervasive.

A burgeoning global economy manifests itself perversely in the trade of
drugs from Latin America and the Middle East. The annual number of
homicides in Richmond in the 1990s exceeded the number of victims of
terrorist violence in Northern Ireland for any year since 1977.

What can the children of our inner cities teach us as we confront a new
sense of our own vulnerability?

First, such young people remind us that violence and terror grow in a soil
of war-zone neighborhoods and can flourish even without guerrilla camps or
international networks.

They portray a vicious cycle in which victims later become perpetrators.
Before anyone becomes a juvenile offender, chances are he or she was an
offended juvenile -- abused and neglected by adults, unsupported by social
structures.

The boys with whom we spoke stressed that Shorty very likely lacked a
stable family environment and strong male role model. His dad was missing
- -- shot, "locked up," or simply absent -- but missing, in any case.
Shorty's mom was a big part of the problem in some accounts. "She smokes,
drinks, and does drugs." In other versions, "his mother is working two or
threejobs" and, consequently, "doesn't spend enough time with the family."
His family were "survivors who didn't have enough money."

Surviving was not good enough for Shorty. He sold drugs for money and what
it buys. He derived his sense of self-respect from externals -- clothes and
a car as well as the girls that they might attract -- and from the
appearance of power, especially in the form of a gun. "Once you got a gun,
you're on top of the world; that's how he sees it anyway." His desire for
respect, his covetousness of things that he could not have, and his
fractious relationships with his peers -- marred by insecurity and fear --
dragged him down.

But, whatever his circumstances, when Shorty fired a gun in a standoff with
Leon, another young drug dealer, and hit a little girl sitting on the front
steps of her home, he became a perpetrator of violence as well as a victim.

The boys emphasized that circumstances played a part in Shorty's fate, but
they also understood that he had choices.

One described "flippin' time," a moment of truth in middle school when a
boy decides to flip to the streets and the promise of easy money rather
than pursue success through school work and discipline. They were clear
that juvenile offenders know right from wrong and acknowledged that they
contributeto their own problems by "not thinking" when they commit a crime.

Another youth wryly noted, "If people thought about things, half of us
wouldn't be here."

The boys held core beliefs in personal responsibility, which is implicit in
the choices made at "flippin' time." They were sure that alternatives to
violence existed.

Some suggested that Shorty could have stayed at home or simply "avoided
Leon." They also placed limits on violence, their own rules of war. "You
don't fire guns in the daylight, everyone knows that -- it could kill a
little kid."

The female juvenile offenders also recognized the limitations of their
environments, but were more optimistic that life offers second chances and
that they had the potential to take advantage of those opportunities. The
girls' stories featured themes of responsibility for other members of the
family, a search for meaningful relationships, and the importance of
nurturing in a child's life. They assumed that Denise's grandmother
supplied the support she needed to overcome her mother's abusive boyfriend.

By sharing their views on the origins of terror and violence, inner-city
children can also teach us how to deal with those forces.

The murky distinction they describe between victims and perpetrators
reminds us of a fundamental truth: Those of us outside the inner city who
portray young offenders as "bad seeds" are, in fact, excusing ourselves for
our part in the "poor soil" of failing schools and war-zone neighborhoods
where Americans have planted our children.

Invoking the culpability of perpetrators of violence and terror,
internationally or within our inner cities, rings hollow unless we also
commit to caring for one another and to nurturing human life. Clearly, we
have war-zone neighborhoods because we have too little sense of
responsibility for each other.

In his community service, my student discovered parallel social universes.

How will higher education help other students discover them and, more
important, eradicate the severe distinctions between them? Classroom
programs work to prevent the violence that children do, but where are the
programs to prevent the violence done to children?

Doubtless, higher education will respond to September 11 and its aftermath
with new courses and proposals to study an almost infinite array of related
topics.

As we work to understand the world of the newly vulnerable, however, we
must also pay attention to those who have so long been threatened by the
racism, poverty, and social indifference that destroys American democratic
values from within.

Beyond external threats, the fight against terror and violence needs to
extend to our inner cities and to the pockets of rural poverty at home.

Service learning, community service, and action research forge the best
defense of our most vulnerable children.

My student is so moved by his discovery of a parallel universe of
vulnerable others that he wants to introduce service learning to elementary
and secondary schools in the state.

He has asked me to help. Will he succeed?

I don't know. Will this mean more work for me? Undoubtedly. Is it worth it?
Yes, because I believe education should play a larger and more-effective
role in analyzing and solving our social and civic problems.

The signs give us hope that higher education is moving in the direction of
accepting this role. Campus Compact, a national coalition of 743 college
presidents, has renewed a call for the civic responsibility of colleges by
renewing their role as "agents of democracy" and leading students to
"embrace the duties of active citizenship and civic participation."

This means faculty members and administrators must step forward to help
students and communities "explore new ways of fulfilling the promise of
justice and dignity of all," including children in poverty and the
unemployed of our inner cities. More than 100 years ago, John Dewey
espoused the means to a democratic education: listening to one another;
deliberating critically about common issues; arriving at solutions to
mutual problems creatively in a community setting; and working together to
find solutions.

An array of community partners, such as the Richmond Juvenile Court, have
endless needs for program evaluations, problem assessments, and other
assistance.

In this new civic infrastructure role, we will study with -- not merely
about -- those on the front lines of our inner cities. If we listen to the
people whom we are accustomed to telling others about, we will learn about
ourselves.

One juvenile offender put it plainly: "There are people who don't see what
they don't want to look at. ... It's there, but they don't want to see it.
So it's not there 'cause they don't look at it."

We may not want to look at the nature of our own "flippin' time," and the
risk we run as a nation that, as a victim of terror, we will also become
its perpetrator by trusting too much in force.

We may also want to avoid seeing the need for a second front in the war on
terrorism.

That front defends democratic principles of equality, community, and
opportunity -- and recognizes that they are violated regularly in the lives
of people whom we have made all but invisible at home as well as abroad.

Yet with community-based pedagogies of service learning and action
research, we can see, as the journal of my student shows, what we don't
ordinarily look at. We can also find a glimmer of a broader protection
against terror and a more certain defense of democratic principles.

Richard A. Couto is professor of leadership studies at the University of
Richmond.