Gatekeepers They Are, Sleepers Are We, Part 3 

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” is a Latin phrase variously translated as "Who will guard the guards?", "Who watches the watchmen?", "Who shall watch the watchers themselves?", 
or similar.
 Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis,
known in English as "Juvenal," was a Roman poet active in the late first and early second century CE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juvenal  

In part 1 we learned that a “gatekeeper” could be an adult adviser to a youth club and that the gatekeeper’s personal limitations, caused by her / himself or by others, could harm youth.  Such harm would come mostly through missed opportunities for education, skills demonstration or recognition.  In part 2 we looked at examples of missed opportunities in Montebello. 

There are other examples locally.  It is not only the opportunities missed by our youth because of the adult gatekeepers and rule makers, but, also, the opportunities missed by all Montebelloans because of different gatekeepers and rule makers.  So it is not fair to say that there is something wrong with the way adult advisers interact with youth in clubs, without saying that there is something wrong with the way those in authority—from city staff on down to school teachers—interact with the public. 

Two glaring examples come from local high schools.   

I have in my e-mail an exchange with a very good teacher with a very good journalism program.  When I saw from his students’ publications that the neighborhoods of Montebello were not regularly mentioned in the publications, I volunteered to come once a week for fifteen minutes to tell the students about Montebello.  His answer was that, if the students wanted to write about Montebello, they would.  I closed this interesting, perhaps bizarre, exchange by saying that, if the students did not know about the issues of Montebello, what would motivate them to write about the issues? 

Another example comes from an advanced- placement course in government taught by a different teacher.  For that course, you and I might think that the students could and should become involved in the community, because doing so would tie directly to the course.  But the teacher said that she had no community activity, as she had to spend all available time preparing the students for the advanced- placement examination in May.  So, some of the best students at the high school had no interaction—and continue not to have interaction—with the community other than through the youth clubs which limit students’ opportunities. 

The problem extends to the way city staff interacts with the public.  According to an article from Spotlight on Montebello, July and August, 2007, staff from our police department decided to stop citizen patrols “because of a recent shooting involving a police volunteer in New York City…”  One would think that the real reason were not being told, because a shooting in New York would hardly seem to be a reason to stop citizen patrols in Montebello. 

And soon we are to have surveillance cameras in Montebello.  That is good, but the idea that we would be dependent on our city and its available funds is not good.  That our city makes it plans according to the twentieth-century view that professionals could and should care of the rest of us is not good for our growth as individuals and as a community.  In other words, did anybody on city staff consider that a meaningful role for residents in the operation of surveillance might give us more effective surveillance and heightened resident interest in their neighborhoods? 

But the problem of gatekeepers is not peculiar to Montebello, as we will see in the next week’s part to this essay.

September 6, 2007