Brother Tupac dropping knowledge back in 1988 on how our education system is responsible for a lot of our learned behaviors as children. Not much has changed in the 3 decades since he said this… Although children’s economical, personal & environmental situations are vastly different, their curriculum is mostly the same (reading, writing & arithmetic). But if you’re not able to apply what you’re learning to your real-life situation as a child, you’re going to find other outlets to learn from to be able to find applicable knowledge. This is why many youth in impoverished environments turn to the streets to be their teachers, since that’s what they need to know to thrive & survive. And that’s why our negative perceptions, stigmas & stereotypes of children raised in the hood (mostly minorities) being thugs, low-lives & degenerates continue to persist – because we assume the worst of people raised in these environments.
This is just a very sad situation where there are a lot of cyclical systems in place that are designed to keep people where they are, and allow others to keep believing and perpetuating negative stereotypes they’ve accepted as fact – on both sides. There are a lot of people who are wrong in this matter & we can continue to bash each other’s actions as much as we want, but nothing will substantially change until we’re willing to understand why we do the things we do, and willing to work cohesively to change them….
