by Robert Coles

About the author: Robert Coles, a professor of psychiatry and medical humanities at Harvard Medical School, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for his five-volume Children of Crisis series. He is also a contributing editor for the New Republic and a columnist for the New Oxford Review.

In recent years I’ve become much connected to some black ministers in Boston, as well as to some youth workers who are white and black—all of whom are trying to connect with youngsters who have dropped out of school, who are gang members, and who more than flirt with law-breaking (violence, drug dealing) as a way of life. My youngest son, now only recently out of college, was the one who first helped me meet such young people—he had done volunteer work...