- Radical Partnerships: Brokering Alliances between Historically Black Colleges-Universities, Public Schools and Community Based Orgranizations to architect Educational Excellence.   15 kb by    Mason, Jonathan & null, null & null, null | masonjonathan@go.com    Short Outline Jonathan Mason 152 Henry Street, # 8 Brooklyn, New York 11201-2504 USA (718) 923-1449 (212) 995-4397 fax MasonJonathan@go.com Our Fathers' Institute During my graduate studies, I was a member of an ethnographic research team that collected data on public school's support staff's use of time and office space. Within the realm of the research study came the responsibility of keeping meticulous records on pupils rate of attendance. I was amazed to learn about the lack of information available on fathers of many school pupils who received our tutorial assistance. The more time I spent in the New York City public schools the more I became aware of the limited information on schools have paternal parents of students. This finding raises great concerns regarding the life developments of many members of America's communities. While ''conspiracy theories'' may (or may not) be relevant, federal and state systems intertwined create within family law, social welfare, school legislation urban housing regulations and real estate issues create some of the greatest challenges to middle and lower income fathers who are perplexed and often quietly discouraged to maintain healthy interactions with their families and the households of their children. America's lower income men (of Latino, African and Native American ancestry) are disenfranchised from participation in with their own families due to the lack of independent living skills, living quarters, blue-white collar employment and literacy issues (both their own and their children's). From a broader view, these individuals are often on fringes of alienation from the e-commerce economy, functional math-science literacy and involvement with their offspring's education. Can we assert a structure to assist these ''family members'' who are at risk of disenfranchisement to gain realty property or rental residence for independent living? Would this perspective curtail a formidable issue and narrow the gap in the structure of American urban disenfranchisement? I believe research and effort to curtail paternal disenfranchisement within urban culture will provide social healing within the boundaries of urban communities. A better part of the population within and surrounding of the New York City landscape breeds parasitic relationships that often hold little value with regards to ethics and the pretty sacrifices of polite manners. The opportunity to strengthen the communities and school systems must seek healing in the lives of children and their parents throughout the spaces of urban landscapes. Involvement can be designed and structured in programs that invite and incorporate parental support in exchange for working to support paternal needs affiliated with job training, housing and financial management. The need exist for an institute to assist with fathers on the fringes of disenfranchisement. This project is an exercise to promote self-development in exchange for greater, healthier participation in the lives of their children. Our public school children are at the greatest risk of toxic examples from family members with whom they reside and those members which they long for and need to bond with. It promotes a healthy independent structure: living quarters, consistent employment and math-science literacy training, ethical dilemma issues and guidance towards a formidable, participatory role in their children's education. Ultimately, distressful health issues of people separated families are at stake: homes, schools, communities, cities and the disenfranchised. The potential for healing exist: families towards resolution, communities need wholeness; schools must become centers proactive leadership. This effort is challenging, difficult and worth it. The mission is to create opportunities to fathers on the fringes of disenfranchisement that will reconnect them to their children through the educational training of math-science literacy in exchange for assistance in independent living skills, housing, and employment. As a former member of the musical group The Police, recording artist Sting sang a verse from a song on the album Synchronicity asserting to ''take the space between us, fill it up some way.'' The space between disenfranchised family members commissions construction of a bridge towards healthy interpersonal structure. I assert this risk to create a blend of services in cooperation with public schools. Instead of being landscapes of the hunted our attempt is to recreate them into locations of healing. Having disenfranchised parents meet with their children through this partnership program can model a structured framework for healing through literacy, interpersonal resolution and reclamation of opportunities to start a new. Stephen King's character Andy Dufresne (Rita Hayworth & the Shawshank Redemption, Different Seasons, 1993) answered the question as to why music was needed in prison with one word: ''hope''. The music provided ''hope'' to reconnect to the living world in outside of a society that encouraged disenfranchised culture. The ''hope'' for stronger family participation in education through math-science literacy training (amongst both disenfranchised parents and public school pupils, their children) stretches communities forward towards greater hopes in community family resolutions by momentarily decreasing the risks of on-going family disinheritance (in this case for the children). Martin King ended a 1967 sermon asserting that ''failure and broken heartedness'' were ''realities in life''. Mr. King concluded by saying ''faith . . . offers an inner equilibrium through . . . pain''. In a city full of failed challenges and brokenhearted stories, living quarters create ''faith'' of a needed ''inner equilibrium.'' The task is a difficult one. But the Institute is a formal exercise to actively research and organize ways to reconnect disenfranchised family members to their children. The staff's demonstration of promoting organized research to reconnect families (disenfranchised parent with school children) through science-math literacy training workshops in schools. The Institute creates a space to foster healthy relationships between the students, disenfranchised parent in public schools around creating a better understanding of math-science literacy. The greatest lesson is to use internal initiative through researching and calculating ethical risk for proactive leadership. The goal is to promote and create healthier legacies through the effort of setting aside coins of effort to build greater fortunes of family wealth. Many of disenfranchised persons are unaware the possibility lies within them. Both Mommy's house and Daddy's house creates options for childhood structure, lessons and opportunities for confidence building. The proposed project offers a broader, more encompassing perspective of family issues at hand. Living quarters for disenfranchised fathers asserts the validity of the needs of both parents. This structure that several members of families (dads) ''distraught in society'' to assert self-reinvention, grant them assistance with financial literacy and expose them to means of becoming legacies of service, models of excellent health and examples to exercise independence and the needed assistance for healthy involvement? The significance of housing the paternal living quarters, occupation, means of steady income factor some of the greatest concerns for persons making cases for governing their individual lives and making time invested, financially supportive and an assertive, responsible participation makes a great bit of difference. Jonathan Mason 152 Henry Street, # 8 Brooklyn, New York 11201-2504 USA (718) 923-1449 (212) 995-4397 fax MasonJonathan@go.com Abstract The Radical Partnership Program seeks to equip communities that has traditionally been disenfranchised with necessary tools human resourcefulness and institutional alliances that will ultimately enable them to confront economic disparities. Keywords - Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2001: Honey, I Shrunk the Space   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper