Teach our kids caring can be cool

May 10, 2008

As a teacher in the Anne Arundel County public schools, I was overjoyed to read Cynthia Tucker's column, "The destructive, twisted values of thug culture" (Commentary, May 5).

Finally, here was a commentator who bluntly pointed to the elephant in the living room that is crushing our children.

Ms. Tucker is right that "if you want to ruin a nation, a society or an ethnic group, persuade its members that the highest form of achievement lies in criminality."

In my school, I have seen children over the years become more cruel and vicious with each other as they try to gain the coolness of being a "gangsta."

Ms. Tucker pointed out that this thug culture is destroying a generation. But we as a society can save these children because they are still young, impressionable and in school.

Let's free the school systems from the restraints of the No Child Left Behind law so that the schools can teach social skills and character instead of how to take a standardized test.

Let us teach our children that the highest forms of achievement lie in the values of empathy, generosity and honesty instead of the "gangsta" values of cruelty, selfishness and deceit.

Let us show the kids that it is cool to be a caring human being.

Robert Jones

Arnold

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