All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of The Wire

by Jonathan Abrams

“I never asked the question again, but I did ask one of my classes how many kids had been shot,” Burns said. “It was eleven. One kid had been shot twice, and he was so proud. He’s pulling up his shirt.” For Burns, teaching became draining. Many of his students were stunted emotionally and mentally, and Burns could not rationalize the expectations that the school system placed on the students versus the realities of what they could handle. He estimated that among his eighth-graders, the students’ reading levels ranged from first to sixth grade. “Opportunity is what these kids lack,” Burns said. “The path is the corner or the stoop. We’re talking about these kids here on the corner. They don’t have advocates…Corner kids, there’s nobody rooting for them. You have to change that world, and where you have to start is ages zero to three. That’s the most formative years of your life, and you’re not even in charge of it. You got to go back and you got to create institutions that give that child the dignity, the self-respect, the love that he or she needs to go out into the world.”