Some kinds of help...

This morning I woke up with a song in my head that I haven't heard for a while. "The Helping Song" from Free to Be, You and Me was running through my head. It's a song about children interfering in other children's activities, sometimes well-intentioned and well-done, sometimes well-intentioned but poorly done, and other times really just being mischevious and calling it "helping." It took me a little while to sort out why my subconscious gave me this song, today.

Finally, I nailed it. It came up during a conversation with a family friend 2 days ago. This friend is really wonderful to us. She is, beyond any doubt, really well intentioned. She loves the kids, and they love her. She is also one of those people who believes, without a shadow of doubt, that her neighborhood is the very best, and the school in that neighborhood is the very best, and that if kids aren't thriving there then they need to be even closer to the school. It could never be that the school, or the neighborhood, needs to be in any way different... always that the dose wasn't high enough. If the child has a fever and Advil doesn't help, give more Advil! Never consider that the ailment may need a different medicine, or even that there may be no "ailment" at all, but just a response.

Last year, we had some recurring issues with the school: communication issues, busing issues, etc. This group of friends - and they are friends - always came back with the same reassurance. The words varied, but the message was that our kids were so close to fitting in, and they would help us be Just Like Them. They would be our kids' new moms and dads, would provide us with surrogate neighbors, would make sure our kids were almost indistinguishable from The Natives. They were going to Save My Kids from the fate the other bused in kids suffer. And, grateful as I am that they did keep the kids safe during the school's fuckups, there's a place where that attitude makes me want to scream. I do not want to be you!!!! I want my children to be treated well in school, as residents of our neighborhood. I want them to be safely bused to and from our neighborhood. I want to be acknowledged. I want my neighborhood to be acknowledged as a neighborhood, and not just as some Outpost for Lesser Children.

There is an attitude there which I'm going to call salvationist, not in the Christian sense (although IMO they are related) but in the belief that the way to help You is to make you more like Me. This is arrogant. It gets on my last nerve, nomatter how well intentioned. I have tried subtle replies like "Yes, isn't it great how many wonderful - yet different - neighborhoods there are in Ithaca?" (insert smile.) This usually gets a smiling blank stare for a second, before returning to raves about the Best Neighborhood. These are the same folks who want to bring all the sweet little children to Jesus, bus poor-but-exception children (in very small, managable numbers) to schools in Good Neighborhoods and adopt all the Ethiopian children and raise them in suburban Jersey. They are the ones who encouragingly remind me how close we are to "passing" for Authentic Neighborhood Kids, and mean it with all the goodness in their hearts. And it drives me up a wall. That song just says it best: Some kinds of help are the kind of help that helping's all about. And some kinds of help are the kind of help... we all can do without.

Here's what I want: If a resource is needed by some of the students, provide it via the school. If a resource is available via the school, make it available to all of the students. Students from one background, neighborhood, etc. do not need to be remolded into images of students from another background, neighborhood, etc. in order for this to happen. Why is this such a threat to neighborhood pride?