The daunting challenges for Francis Slay as mayor for the next four years are well known. The Economist magazine recently called the city’s top job a “poisoned chalice” and piled on by calling Slay’s next term “four more turbulent years.” The London-based magazine called public schools the city’s worst problem and cited board meetings as episodes of “The Jerry Springer Show.” Even if you excuse some of the English journal’s characterizations as excessive, the newly hired, permanent superintendent, Creg Williams, a promising choice from Philadelphia public schools, will not have an easy time addressing this school district’s myriad problems.
Dr. Williams will need more than cheerleading from this community. He will need more commitment from community leaders (from both the public and private sectors), his board, district employees, parents and rank-in-file adults to enhance the children’s opportunity for greater academic success.
A valuable concept that engages more people to reach youngsters through sports or music or teaching specific school subjects has been implemented with great success elsewhere. Washington Post columnist William Raspberry tells of Orlando Doyle of Detroit, who created Impact Seminars for Youth, a program in which he recruits hundreds of successful adults to spend one hour a year at one school talking about the connection between their schooling and their careers. This program increases the odds that flooding the schools with so many interested adults will lead to a particular child finding an adult they can relate to.
The most important issue in the success of programs like Doyle’s is personal commitment. Raspberry warns that, despite their stated commitments to the public good, politicians, educators and school officials are drawn sooner or later to “their institutional priorities: defending their turf, protecting their budgets, saving their jobs.” Moreover, he adds rightly that this group tends to rely most heavily on reform of institutions to set things right. They feel that the right programs, the right budgets and the right superintendent ensure that prospects for children will improve.
Yet innovative thinkers like Hugh Price, formerly president of the National Urban League and now co-chair of the non-profit and philanthropic practice group of a New York law firm, make a convincing argument when they remind us of the importance of “involving children intimately in their own education by infecting them with a love of learning.”
Raspberry offers a quote from Antoine de Saint-Excipery to drive home the point:”If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the immensity of the sea.”
Since we are told by the U.S. Labor Department that two-thirds of all new jobs will require post-secondary education, it is clear that, as a community, we have this important obligation and responsibility to prepare our children for their collective future.