A Better Baltimore

When a report looked into the question “What will Baltimore City look like in the year 2000?” the answer was startling. The report called for a bleak future for Baltimore. A future where the city schools would be ineffective, undisciplined and dangerous, the people would become poorer as the population lagged, and complete isolation would impede those individuals that remained within the boarders of the city. The report offered a condescending solution: to blow up the city and start over again. As this solution is not a favorable option or in the best interests of Baltimore residents, an alternative and more proactive solution must be developed. Finding this solution was the nature of the speech that was given by education policy expert Marion Orr on Tuesday March 13th as part of The Year of the City’s Big 3 Lecture Series. Orr specifically addressed the current state of education with Baltimore.
Orr began his talk stating these alarming facts about the current education condition within Baltimore. He noted that Baltimore has made some strides in the right direction since he read the pessimistic prognosis for the city in the year 2000. These progressions, however, as Orr notes, are not enough. The city is still lacking the resources to effectively educate the students of Baltimore’s public school system. The “large concentration of poverty” is a major part of the stumbling block leading to the poor condition of the city schools. As we have examined throughout this semester, the impact of poverty and the inclination to separate the city by race and more specifically, income, is a key force that further contributes to the failure of city schools.
Following the changes in demography and the socio-economic status of Baltimore residents that occurred throughout the second half of the 21st century, were changes in education. Upon the shift from the manufacturing to a corporate, white collar Baltimore, the ability of the African Americans to hold their status as middle class drastically dropped. As the whites moved out of the city and into the suburbs, so did the white school children, their teachers, and their administrators. Essentially these changes led to a clear division and between wealth and poverty as the middle class continued to straggle. The education was an area that took this hit the hardest.
As evidenced within the literature piece assigned this week, “In a Station of the Metro” by Ezra Pound it is important to be observant when examining the world around us. The speaker of this poem observes the people around her on a city metro without judging them separately, as they are all “petals on a wet, black bough” (line 2). Marion Orr, in one sense is the observant onlooker for the city of Baltimore. He identifies the problems and calls for all to help no matter their status. Relating back to the piece written by Jane Jacobs, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” and the poem “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost, both propose suggestions for the reconnection of the divided. Jacobs calls for “a seam rather than a barrier, a line of exchange along which two areas are sewn together” (267) and a situation where people do not need to be afraid to redraw the community lines. Frost finds the importance of re-connecting the community as being more significant than rebuilding the fence that divides it. Marion Orr, within the conclusion of his speech, asks for all of this. He challenges the fortunate to break down the barrier by directly investing in the community through hands-on involvement. Overall, he calls upon all members of the Baltimore community to be observant and to defy complacency as everyone works to create a better, more educated Baltimore.