Side Note:

http://www.soros.org/issues/education_youth

The mission statement of the Open Society Foundation:

The Open Society Foundations work to build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens. To achieve this mission, the Foundations seek to shape public policies that assure greater fairness in political, legal, and economic systems and safeguard fundamental rights. On a local level, the Open Society Foundations implement a range of initiatives to advance justice, education, public health, and independent media. At the same time, we build alliances across borders and continents on issues such as corruption and freedom of information. The Foundations place a high priority on protecting and improving the lives of people in marginalized communities.

Society Foundation:

They have recently adopted a new initiative focused on revamping the educational paradigms which condition the lives of many minority youths, men in particular, in the United States. Their attempts to change the trajectory "from schools to prisons." Some of the initiative's guidelines include:

• promote education equity, and dismantle of the school-to-prison pipeline, to ensure that black boys have the opportunity to excel academically, to prepare for college, and to learn skills essential to earning a living wage;
• strengthen low-income black families through responsible fatherhood initiatives, policy advocacy, and supporting efforts that lift barriers facing single mothers raising black boys;
• • integrate strategic communications into the campaign's work across its three core areas to promote positive messages about black men and boys;
  • promote leadership development and advocacy/organizing training for young black males, providing them with the tools to become empowered citizens and informed advocates for themselves and their communities;
  
  
  
  
  Here we can see underlying influence from Jacatot, as well at the community approach of Rogers and Malaguzzi. I found the guideline addressing the projected messages about black men and boys existing across the nation particularly compelling, in that it recognizes the effect these messages have on limiting the minds of its subjects. The public conceptions, however insidious, of jails waiting for young black boys in New York City, the divine plan in store for them, negates the liberating potential of education. It actively denies their ability to emancipate their minds. Promoting positive messages about black men and boys then, does not provoke effects isolated to the way they are perceived by their society, but more importantly, is a conscious step towards deconstructing a self-fulfilling narrative.