Aspiration, like alienation, is easy to spread

via @anu. This is great

If you think you are an idealist, get off twitter, put down your placard, stop gazing at your navel to examine your privilege. Put your money and time where your mouth is. Go and volunteer in a primary school and sit with those who are struggling to read, go and become a school governor, go and do a bit of training to become an adult advocate so that when one of these kids goes through the judicial system and their parents can’t or won’t participate in the process, you can be called on to speak to and for them. If you can’t do any of those things, work an extra shift or do some baby-sitting to free up a colleague or friend who can. Unlike gesture politics, these acts will make a difference. I’ve seen the difference they can make; I’ve seen the tragically slight difference between the 20th and 21st percentile. It’s the difference between me and my brothers, between prison and college. It’s the difference between the young offender I taught in Cardiff and his cellmates. His daughter, proudly ruffled in a dozen layers of pink lace, was christened with his probationer officer’s and my first names, because as he said, without us, he’d be ‘dead, not a dad’. I was touched by that comment, but I also thought the tragedy was that most boys who started out like him were both not dead and serial dads. His daughter is very lucky, she’ll be brought up with different values to those he grew up with. Aspiration, like alienation is very easy to spread. You just have to get off both your arse and your moral highground to spread it.

from: Rosamicula – most of the kids are alright