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January 12, 2006
It does take a village
Over the last three nights PBS stations aired a six-hour documentary following two teenage boys in David, Kentucky, through their high school graduation and beyond. It was a disturbing story – not at all the kind of coming-of-age tale that books and movies prepare us for. You know the ones I mean: stories where young men and women overcome the dark family secret or the traumatic event or the raging father and live happily ever after. Usually such stories are told long after the fact, after the protaganist has gone on to a productive life. In Country Boys, the young men’s futures remain daunting.
The boys are Cody Perkins and Chris Johnson. Cody’s mother died when he was young. His father remarried, but when Cody was a boy, his father shot his stepmother and himself. Chris grew up in a trailer with a nervous, unhappy mother and an alcoholic father.
Cody and Chris both attended the David School, where the faculty goes to extraordinary ends to help its struggling students through. Despite an overlay of Baptist morality in the classroom that plays naturally in Kentucky but would never play in New England, the principal and the teachers are the stars of this story. They are the last chance for wayward teens in a dead-end town. They provide Chris with direction, gumption and even a place to live. They give Cody a bright shining moment that propels him into the world.
To boil the story down to its essence, Cody has one thing Chris doesn’t: unconditional love. He lives with a reserved step-grandmother who gives him the combination of freedom and guidance he needs. He has a steady girlfriend who is solid beyond her years. And he has the church, including a pastor who takes a big-brotherly interest in him.
Although Chris often gives up school in frustration, he excels academically and even has a shot at college. But without a loving family to support him, he remains fragile. Once he leaves the David School, his first setback freezes him in his tracks. Perhaps something good will happen to revive his hopes, but as the film ends, his lack of self-esteem has landed him in a dead-end life.
The powerful story of these two boys left me with many thoughts.
One was how foreign life in the Bible Belt seems – at least as it is lived in this one small town in Kentucky. A teacher at the David School has no problem leading a class discussion to ludicrous ends to put down the theory of evolution. The class openly raises – and, of course, ridicules – the notion that Jesus was a monkey. During a discussion of incest in another class, one girl bravely raises her hand when the teacher asks if anyone thinks a girl should consider an abortion if her father impregnates her. The teacher responds with the assurance that there is a good chance in such cases that the baby will turn out just fine.
I do not mean to put down Bible Belt religion. Cody’s salvation from the demons of his childhood – the violent deaths of his parents – is his belief. God has vanquished Cody’s anger and replaced it with love. Without this belief, he would have little chance of escaping the dark hole in his past.
One final thought: Those who ridiculed Hillary Clinton’s assertion that “It takes a village to raise a child” should be forced to watch this documentary. Even though the epilogue suggests that Cody is on the right track, it is disquieting to contemplate the future these two young men face in this difficult world. But without strong institutions and caring strangers to support them during their growing-up years in David, that future, through no fault of their own, would be far bleaker.
Posted by Mike Pride at January 12, 2006 10:11 AM
Comments
The blog discussion of the circumstances of two Kentucky boys mentioned critics of Hilary Clinton's It Takes a Village. It brought to mind criticism of Hilary's health care plan 10 or 12 years ago.
Considering and contrasting what the government is doing now with Medicare and Medicaid, perhaps her health care plan was not as complicated or as bad as critics made it out to be.
Posted by: John Stohrer at January 13, 2006 05:54 PM