School-info4u.com wishes to highlight the fact that many young people struggle to find a balance between school and the streets. The notion of goals and aspirations: Schools versus the streets, can be expressed in this interesting narrative...
Once upon a time in a far, far off land, lived some people called stereotypes and dream-stealers. The dream-stealers didn’t like the stereotypes and treated them quite badly.
They would constantly put down the stereotypes and tell them that they would never be able to achieve their goals. But a goal is just a dream with a deadline isn’t it, and why shouldn’t we believe in dreams?
The mind is a very powerful tool and so it follows that what the stereotype thinks, they will eventually become.
The dream-stealers basically have low expectations of the stereotypes and without the support of a parent or carer; the stereotype will live up to this.
A dream-stealer expects the stereotype to fail instead of encouraging them to aim high and succeed. The stereotype will pick up on the attitudes that the dream-stealer’s display towards them and this makes them start to feel like a failure.
As a result of this the stereotype will start to loose interest, give up and not fulfill their potential.
‘You’ve got to have a dream. If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?’
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein
‘Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges’. Joyce A. Myers
‘I will not allow anyone to walk through my mind with their dirty feet’. Mahatma Ghandi
Motivating your child to succeed in school
What if the stereotype was your child? Would you not motivate your child to work hard and do their best?
Your child does have the ability. Motivation will determine what they do with this ability and their attitude will determine how well they do it.
You must teach your child not to listen to dream-stealers, when they are trying to make their dreams become a reality; because this is the only way to prevent their mind from being controlled by the dream-stealers.
A stereotype wants to try and fit in with the crowd. They don’t want their peers to see them as a ‘bookworm’ who does well at school. They believe that a new pair of trainers and some designer labels is all they should be aiming for.
Do we really believe that these are the only things that the stereotype should be yearning and striving for?
I hope not, because if we start going down that road we will end up worshiping material things and along the way we will lose sight of what really matters.
‘If you want to feel rich, just count all of the things you have that money can't buy’.
When a stereotype is confronted by a dream-stealer, they show anger, but the stereotype needs to learn how to disagree without being disagreeable.
A stereotype will want to join a gang, because they feel that it will guarantee them protection.
The stereotype should choose who they move with much more carefully. Not on a superficial basis, but on the basis of what that person represents.
They have to ask themselves ‘what positivity and constructive contribution is this person bringing into my life?’
A gang is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s always good to feel that you are a part of something. But the stereotype only sees the negative aspects of the gang, and the rest of us never see the positive aspects of gangs.
Gangs have been around for thousands of years and they exist in all parts of the world, the only thing is they’re not called gangs, but they are sometimes referred to as tribes.
In our society gangs tend to be formed for negative reasons and objectives.
Back in the day, they were formed with the objective of ‘getting to know thyself’, and they were run by the elders of the community with positive goals in mind.
Nowadays, gang members can only get short-term, conditional support from each other and this doesn’t help their self-respect and self-esteem at all.
They are 'looked down on' by society and seen as a problem, but the stereotype is just thinking, ‘bwoy, if I can’t earn the respect I want, I’ll just make people afraid of me instead’.
‘Don't compromise yourself. You're all you've got’. Janis Joplin
‘Tell me who's your friend and I'll tell you who you are’.Russian proverb
‘To get nowhere, follow the crowd’.
Help your child to make the right choices
We need to teach the stereotype to be an individual and not follow the crowd; this will just get in the way of them making their dreams a reality.
Every stereotype has the potential to succeed; it just depends on what support they get and what their outlook on life is.
The streets are educating the stereotype and it should really be the job of the school, parent/carers and other significant adults in their life.
The stereotype feels that being on the streets will give them ‘street cred’, but a life on the street won’t get them a place at university or a promising future.
The streets will just prevent our young people from progressing. We need to show them the life that they will have if they choose to hustle on the streets, then show them the alternative, the kind of life that they could have if they choose education.
The stereotype has to leave the mentality and chaos of the streets behind and dare to dream.
‘You see things and say, why? But I dream things that never were and say why not?’ George Bernard Shaw
‘If you want your dreams to come true, don't sleep’. Yiddish Proverb
