1Reviews and everything / It's 4 PM do you know where your children are - RENDERING
.docAlex Kvartalny @ flamedragon27.blogspot.com
Group 501
Rendering of the Article It’s 4:00 p.m.: Do You Know Where Your Children Are?
The theme of the article is centred round the quandary over children being alone after school.
The author tries to convince the reader of the necessity of a place where young people can go after school to stay off the streets and out of their empty homes. Unless such place is found everyone loses – children, parents and society.
The problem time is between 3 p.m. till about 8 p.m. when children are unsupervised and get in with the wrong crowd.
The author calls the reader’s attention to solutions to the problem. One of them is an old National Guard armoury restored by the Jacksonville Children’s Commission that now serves as an innovative charter school, a police substation and a Boys and Girls Club all rolled into one. Some children are playing kickball, others prefer board games, older kids play pool and the main thing is that it is all done under adult supervision. Youth crime in the area plummeted.
When budgets get tight, after-school programs – wrongly dismissed as “frills” – are often cut first. When the talk turns to society’s worst problems, it’s easy to shrug off concerns about kids home alone watching afternoon television or hanging with friends.
But the author believes times have changed. Among cops, social-service types and policymakers, there’s a new awareness that structured activity during out-of-school hours is absolutely critical to confronting many of the country’s most vexing social problems since only one seventh of all juvenile crime is committed in the late night and early morning.
The author turns the spotlight to the fact that although crime is down in metropolitan areas, it is up in hundreds of small communities, especially among youth. Drug abuse in suburban middle schools is surging. Teen-pregnancy rates equal to those in big cities are now reported in rural areas. The absence of parents from home in the afternoon has made it more convenient to get into trouble and commit crimes, both petty and serious. Statistics are saying that juvenile crime triples starting at 3 p.m. In fact, the time between 2 and 8 p.m. – “crime time” – now accounts for more than 50% of all youth offences. Juvenile homicide, which has doubled in a decade, is usually connected with after-school fights, not late-night crime.
According to the author, good youth-development programs not only keep kids safe, but often help change their lives and it is important to make schools available for recreation, tutoring and arts for a larger part of the day so that the average American child can choose between spending more time at school or sitting 1500 hours per year in front of a TV set. The latter option might be a better one for the working poor though.
The author is sure that young people need some positive place to go after school to stay off the streets and out of their empty homes, because if they end up in jail, in drugs treatment or pregnant, we’ll all pay. He or she concludes that the schools that poor children attend are unlikely to have after-care. Currently only 30 % of American schools offer after-hours supervision and the vast majority of them charge fees that are too high for many who need it most. The author agrees with the nation’s police chiefs, the biggest backers of after-school programs, who argue that recent reductions in crime, while gratifying, are temporary.
I agree with the author’s opinion that the children should not hang around the streets unsupervised and neglected, because they can easily get into trouble. It is up to parents, governments, educational and sports organizations to help kids develop their full potential and motivate them to take part in social activities rather than anti-social ones.