November 30, 1986-San Antonio Express-News

City's young need the arts

While many quarters of the city are embroiled in the nagging problems of juvenile delinquency, the arts keep on "truckin'."

We often forget that youth seeks excitement, for as the young begin to define their lives they are liable to overreach and burn themselves.

Full of adrenaline and other fuels, youth faces a world of unknown factors begging to be experienced.

In our haste to make profits, we often forget that youth is a restive period in search of festivity and meaning.

Parents make do as well as possible, moving to where the jobs are in order to support a family.

Unable to rent or buy a home in an area that has facilities for personal and community development, parents opt for the affordable and convenient, figuring that the love they hold for their children might just be the key to their development.

Parents mired down

Or perhaps the parents are so mired down just in paying the rent that the children have to figure out their own entertainment - especially in an area of town lacking even rudimentary recreational and cultural facilities.

In a city that has prided itself on its plethora of arts and cultural programs, there seems to be a great need for outlets for youth.

The staging of readings, exhibitions and other cultural phenomena is admirable, but it does not seem to reach out to those youth now hanging out at the margins of San Antonio society.

There doesn't seem to be a place where restive youths can go and do something that can nurture their questing spirits.

Dropout rates indicate more than just the fact that some major segment of contemporary youth does not want to be in school. These rates also attest to the failure of educators in not making education an alluring and enjoyable adventure.

Too many people graduate unable to read on a 12th-grade level and many incoming university students write on a junior high level. A few years of teaching in junior colleges and universities convinced me that our educational systems need to be upgraded and that education should be an enjoyable set of experiences, not drudgery or simple memorization.

Community responsibilities

Not all the blame should be shouldered by school personnel, for families and the general community also have grave responsibihties to account for.

Culturally, we see a landscape of programs that simply cannot begin to respond to the "real" conditions of barrio youth.

Mainstream youths take advantage of some of the local programs, but the ones who have problems in our society seldom will get to participate in programs, for no one has reached out to them and let them know that there do exist some resources for them.

With all the city talent (that seemingly has no open forums to perform and display in) available, it seems only natural for cultural and artistic programs to reach out to disenfranchised youth and offer them programs where they can excel.

Some of these street-corner youths ultimately will wind up in prison, there to become acquainted with the arts.

Find a latent talent

A few will try drawing and find a latent talent in need of honing, while a few others will discover the myriad worlds of music, poetry and prose.

Those who gravitate to the arts in prison might do so because an older and wiser convict might teach them about the arts. Perhaps a book that speaks to them about their lives might whet their appetites, or overhearing a discussion about some artist or writer who once did time might inspire them.

Whatever the means, the fact is many convicts have discovered a talent within themselves. That talent often has been cultivated in the privation and abjection of prison, the most underfunded and dehumanizing of our institutions.

With the fact established that the arts can be therapeutic and also a doorway to social survival perhaps we can envision cultural centers that will help youth to develop skills and pride in themselves.

Maybe a failing mall like Fiesta Plaza can make space available to programs that will dare to create experimental and adventurous learning strategies. Maybe youth can find their own meaning if only we reach out with programs that appeal to their energies and concerns.

It's worth a try, for the young all are worthy of acquiring skills that they respect. Their futures are our futures.

Choctaw performers

A Choctaw Native American couple Roxy and Judy Gordon - will perform a multimedia show Saturday at 7 p.m. at Paperbacks ... y Mas! Bookstore and Gallery, 1819 Blanco Road. Call John Tilton for information at 732-6799.

The two perform out of Dallas. Their shows have a political aura that has found censure in such august arenas of aesthetics as the Fielder Museum in Arlington.

Native peoples see the world in a different light; their images speak to horrid truths and painful histories. That can be disconcerting to those who still believe in fairy-tale accounts that ignore a legacy of genocide, racism and human destruction.

Our pressing social problems beg for understanding and creative avenues, not for isolation and castigation. It is the future - theirs and ours - we are all responsible for. We are what we do and say.