WHEN EL-AMIN COMES KNOCKING, TELL HIM 'NO THANKS'

If the state takeover czars who sort of set policy for the Hartford
schools want to flex their muscles and perform a valuable public
service, they should padlock themselves to the front doors of the
city's middle schools and prevent Khalid El-Amin from speaking to
students who have more important things to do.

El-Amin, whose only credential as a distinguished educator is that he
shoots a pretty good jump shot for the University of Connecticut
basketball team, has been coerced into sharing his wisdom with the
kids as punishment for getting nabbed with a bit of marijuana.

This approach to "community service" sentencing is all the rage in
legal circles; gang thugs, drug dabblers and white-collar crooks are
routinely sent out among the youngsters to wag their fingers and vow
to sin no more.

There is no bigger prize than a popular athlete -- how much more
interesting a way to spend the morning than learning the
multiplication tables.

The El-Amin obligation to chatter and appear morose in Hartford
schools is irresponsible, insulting and dumb. Criminal court judges
don't set education policy for the Hartford schools -- and the city
should stand up for what's right and send El-Amin back to court for a
more constructive slap on the wrist.

Middle school kids aren't dumb. They are well practiced in the art of
apologizing to adults and kicking themselves for being careless enough
to get caught. They also are sophisticated enough to know that
El-Amin's well-scripted grovel has been produced as an alternative to
jail time or raking leaves in the park.

What might not occur to the Hartford middle school kids is why exactly
they were picked as the captive audience. Drug arrest? Oh, let's send
Khalid to those Hartford schools, filled with brown and black children
who by their nature are only one small step away from needles dangling
from their arms.

If the El-Amin patter is going to be how irresponsible he was to risk
a high-paying career, shooting baskets and marketing athletic shoes,
then why don't we carry the insulting racist stereotype to its logical
conclusion?

Send him to speak in Avon, Simsbury and Farmington, filled with
budding doctors, lawyers and insurance executives who can't risk an
arrest record on their way to the top.

One of the revealing bits of wisdom to emerge from decades of research
by tweedy, elbow-patched communication scholars is that the audience
often engages the speaker in a mental dialogue during the performance.
What would the middle school kids be mulling while El-Amin is
delivering his sermon?

Did he ever partake of evil-demon marijuana during the basketball
season? If you're already famous before you get nabbed, is it likely
that sermons in school auditoriums will be the punishment of choice?
How did you know where to go in Hartford to buy your stuff? Would you
be feeling so bad if you hadn't been caught?

What is the perception that an appearance by a popular basketball
player will make on the middle school drug-addicts-to-be? El-Amin will
be greeted with enthusiastic applause, he will be introduced by the
school stiffs with more awe and respect than many of the kids have
ever experienced, and he will exit the stage a conquering hero --
marijuana arrest be damned.

The appearance will be lavishly covered by news media and deemed a
"success": The idiotic rationalization for the "do as I say, not as I
do" curriculum.

Whether you're a falling-off-the-edge-of-the-earth libertarian who
doesn't think it's anyone's business what El-Amin is smoking, or a
slippery-slope, anti-drug warrior, there is something distasteful
about judges and educators using high-profile personalities who screw
up to teach a murky lesson that if you smoke a little dope and shoot a
few hoops, perhaps you too, someday, can be stars of the middle school
assembly.

For all the chatter about the need for diversity and expanded
opportunities for minority children, in the end what we offer them is
another black athlete in trouble with the law. It borders on
educational malpractice, with a strong assist from judges who think
it's cute to send the criminals back to their own kind.