Politicians and even well meaning people often pay lip service to “it takes a village to raise a child.”  Unfortunately, they usually mean children who live in middle to upper income family environments.  Inner city children and children from low income families are somehow left out of the village.  We don’t want to have to think about or deal with theses children.  Most of their parents don’t vote and cannot afford to contribute to a political candidate’s campaign, so they are pretty easy to ignore.  As a result, these children are placed on the road to failure early in life.  They may live in an abusive environment or one consisting of an almost complete lack of family values or parental nurturing.  For example, Asheville has several public housing communities.  Only 30% of the children that grow to maturity in public housing graduate from high school.  Only a handful continues their education beyond high school.  Thus, the cycle of failure repeats itself over and over again.  Therefore, we have a choice.  We can either create good citizens who contribute to our society in many material ways, or we can produce people who will be a continuous burden to our society, many of which will become predators on our society.