Opinion: Everyone should try out incarceration and poverty

To the editor: Having taught in grades 4-12 in the ghetto, in adult school for students on parole as well as severely emotionally disturbed teens, I think there are a couple more worthy areas of “experiential learning” akin to Jesse Ball’s modest proposal that all Americans perform a stint in jail. (“Everyone should go to jail, say, once every ten years,” Opinion, June 30)

Anyone running for political office and anyone who makes a middle-class income should have to do two things: live in the ghetto for two weeks every couple of years, and teach for a month in a school that serves a tough, poverty-stricken neighborhood.

Getting out of poverty is impossible for the majority of people entrenched in these areas. The poor have to deal with neighborhood crime, drug dealing, gangs, poor availability of healthcare, lack of major grocery stores for nutritious foods, lousy landlords, unemployment, child abuse down the street and poor knowledge of government institutions. They also have a fear of the police and of their kids ending up in jail.

Don’t forget the old adage of the Native Americans: To truly know someone, you must walk in their moccasins. Only then do things sometimes change.

Jodi Sandven, Los Angeles

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