Do you remember a pro basketball player in the NBA a few decades ago named Spud Webb? What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you recall that name? He was SHORT, right? A very SHORT, yet very good professional basketball player. You would never have believed this guy could play NBA ball until you saw it with your own eyes.
He even played for the Atlanta Falcons and won the 1986 slam dunk contest to the dismay of millions! Read more about this amazing athlete here.
But, even more interesting than his game was his attitude. I have to wonder if he ever saw himself the way most spectators did - as an anomoly. Where did this guy get the guts to play basketball as a kid?
My point is that he likely had some fans from within his family or a close network of friends who encouraged him to keep trying, even when he was the smallest guy on the team. He must have had a great cheering section, both on and off the court, in order to continue playing against the other guys on the block who were likely much, much bigger than him.
I doubt that, as a child, he would have told people he wanted to be a pro basketball player when he grew up. I doubt a guidance counselor (or graduation coach) would have led him in that direction. But, somewhere along the line, this guy got the confidence to follow his dream and let it take him as far a possible.
I'm sure there were plenty of times he thought he might quit, but someone must have been there for him to tell him that he had to keep trying. There is so much power in simply having the right attitude, or the belief in yourself, that you can literally be small in size, but dream big and have those dreams come true.
Yeah, great story, but DeKalb isn't buying into it
What disturbs me is that I thought everyone knew this story already. I thought it was a sort of folklore passed down to each generation of kids so they would keep trying things until they got them right. I thought we were all taught from a young age that we are supposed to believe in ourselves and push the limits of how much we can accomplish in our lifetime.
But, at the DeKalb School Board forum for candidates I attended recently, there did not sound like any Spud Webb stories were being told to any children these days. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Time and time again I heard both incumbents and challengers stating things like, "we know that not all kids are cut out for college." Or, "some kids will just naturally want to be some kind of technician and never go to college.
There was a pretty long discussion about how soon to send these kids over to the machine shop all day so they would not have to sit through their normal classes. One exception was Ms. Denise McGill, a challenger in District 6. Ms. McGill, to the applause of many in the audience, said that a quality education is something that can and should be delivered to all our children. And they can all feel just as good about themselves as those few gifted children who get all the perks of the system today. I really enjoyed listening to Denise McGill as she shares my attitude about what is possible.
Mr. Paul Womack, incumbent for District 4, said that some kids are just going to want to do something else, like be a cook or a cop or a bag boy at Publix, I suppose. I thought the audience was going to come unglued, but much to my dismay, they mostly just sat there and nodded thier heads in agreement.
What planet are these people from? Oh, that's right... Georgia
I don't know about you, but when I was in school, it was assumed that college was the natural next stop for every student. We were told that pretty soon a college degree would be the minimum you would need to even work at McDonald's. We were going to be part of a new global marketplace and we would have a lot more competition for every job out there.
If your family could not afford a big tuition, you planned to go to community college. If your family could not afford a community college, then you started looking for ways to get a scholarship early by playing a sport, an instrument or excelling in academics. Some kids even had Summer jobs that they used to save for college and others ended up taking out student loans in order to get through. But, we believed what our parents and the teachers and everyone else was telling us back then.
We were college material. All of us. Every last one of us could and should work hard now and plan on a future that included college and then a career. Did everyone end up going that route? Probably not. But, I know we all tried. I don't think anyone really knew what they might be one day when they grew up, but we all had dreams as I'm sure that all the kids growing up in DeKalb County right now do, too.
Kids will do what you expect them to do
If we expect a certain percentage of our chilren to fail, they will fail. If we accept that not all of our children will ever be college material, then they will find a way to make sure we are right. Children love to please the role models in their lives. They have a way of living up to your expectations even when you do not realize they are even trying.
And if we can openly talk in a meeting where candidates should be telling the audience what they will do better than the incumbents if we elect them, it's sad to hear so many of them talk about what they think we should do with the kids who will want to drop out and take a shortcut out of education and a fast track into blue collar life.
Have we forgotten that education, a good education, gives you so much more than just an entry ticket to the career of your liking? Education, especially higher education, gives a person a greater respect for all people, an understanding of the way the world works, an appreciation for one's own talents and a confidence level that will take them far in life no matter what line of work they ultimately settle on.
Education has long been known as the "great equalizer" and the one thing that is almost certain to "prevent poverty." Here is an article written by Eric Waldo, Deputy Chief of Staff at the U.S. Department of Education and Frankie Martinez-Blanco, Director of Advance at the U.S. Department of Education on this subject: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/10/07/renewing-american-dream-education-great-equalizer
C'mon! Let's do education RIGHT for a change!
Education, if done right, is a life-long process. We learn to appreciate ourselves and others, our strengths and our challenges, our history and our current lot in life. And, most of all, we learn how to dream, to believe and to strive to achieve something bigger and better than we ever thought possible when we were just coming up in the system.
To reroute children toward a pathway that does not include all the benefits, tangible and intangible, of a real education is a sorry goal for a school system that has a billion dollars a year at its disposal.
I wonder how many of our school board members are truly happy in their jobs right now, knowing that they are partially to blame for the jobs that were recently cut? I wonder how many teachers could have gotten through to those kids that we plan to pass on down the line without the skills to even write a cover letter or read a want ad?
Please get out and vote July 31. Remember what this is all about!
I know there are a lot of people feeling sorry for themselves right now. But I'm just feeling sorry for all those children who don't really want to be auto mechanics or assembly line workers, but they were never given a bar to even try to jump over.
We just set the bar on the ground, tell them all to run as fast as they can and aim for the middle.
What about the girls who want to be Moms? Why bother educating them at all, right? Heck, why even tell them about birth control if that's what they really want. I am also grateful for the plumbers and carpenters and mechanics but I guarantee that the ones who have high school diplomas will get a job faster than the ones who don't. And the ones who went to college will one day be the business owners whereas the others may be more likely to remain the worker helping a bunch of other people get rich. These are facts of life and while there are always exceptions to the rule, the exceptions will always tell you that they had to work harder, be more ambitious or do something extraordinary in order to overcome what they lost by not staying in school. I do not know one high school drop out who does not regret it or one who would not want more for his/her child.
This isn't an employment agency. It's a school system. His job as a board member is to find the best way to provide a quality education to all children regardless of their age, race, sex, religion, national origin or income level. And HE was saying that some kids are not "cut out" for college?? If that is true, then he should be calling himself a failure because he has spent many years on our board engaging mostly in battles between north/south, black/white, rich/poor that keep all of us locked into an outdated way of thinking that can only foster hate and resentment. He was saying that they want to go into these other fields then we can "route them" to the appropriate technical schools early on. Do we really not have enough faith in our children to expect them to be able to get through high school without the need to "route" them to other types of training and deprive them from the many, many other benefits there are to higher learning or even to just satisfaction of having a high school diploma to hang on their wall?
I did not mean to imply that college was the only aspiration that is worthy. I meant that college is something that our school board leaders should be working to place within the reach of every child that they are entrusted to educate. Sure, there are other goals, but I am not criticizing the goals that adults set for themselves. I'm criticizing the limits that adults (from the upper 1% income bracket) appear to be placing on children (from the lower 99%) without blinking an eye and they don't feel any twinge of responsibility for how things got that way in the first place..
Students attend their regular home schools for 1/2 day and 1/2 day at DHST-South. Students may earn 4 units of credit towards the completion of a technical diploma or technical seal to accompany the academic diploma. Students develop employable skills, work ethics, and skills that will enable them to become productive and responsible citizens who are successful in their chosen career fields.
Automotive Body Collision Repair Automotive & Mechanical Services Barbering Broadcast & Video Production Construction Cosmetology Electronics Healthcare CNA Healthcare Medical Information Technology Public Safety Work-Based Learning/Youth Apprenticeship What is wrong with this? Perhaps these kids attend this school (where AP level course are offered) and find a career to pursue. Maybe this will inspire them to go on and further their education beyond high school. I know plenty of people who have successful careers in these areas. Way to go, DeKalb! At least you are guiding children away from the idea that one can just drop out of school and live off of the government. :) And if some girls knew going into college that they wanted to be moms, it sure would save parents and individuals a lot of money spent on higher education. College is not for everyone. ;)
Cheryl Miller 8:31 am on Wednesday, July 25, 2012 You obviously do not have kids because no one I know would direct a daughter toward skipping out on the chance at a college education. Your comments would set back the civil rights and feminists movements by several decades. We obviously see the purpose of an educational system in different ways. You see it as a system to prevent children from failing. I see it as a system that should prepare them for success. Do we need those occupations you listed? Of course. Are we helping the employers by pre-training the children in South DeKalb to become the workforce of tomorrow? You bet. Is this in the best interest of these kids? You tell me. I don't think it is. I heard about the 7th grade "re-routing" at the candidate forum held July 19th. It was not a statement about what we are doing now. It was an answer to a question about the future.
Again, I am not insulting the career choices of ADULTS. I am talking about the purpose of an EDUCATION system and its responsibility to the CHILDREN ... a PUBLIC education system which, by definition, is supposed to provide a quality education, funded by taxes that are given by the members of the community for the purpose of creating equal opportunity for ALL children. If you are saying that some kids are just not SMART enough or GOOD enough to go as far in their education as others, that's your opinion. If you have been elected to sit on the Board of Education and you are saying that, then it is a major cop-out, in my opinion. That's blaming the children for your own failure to do your job well. If they are not "cut out" for more it is because the school system failed them. I believe all children enter the school system with an ability to learn and a willingness to be taught. I think all teachers enter the profession with the right motivations and a reasonable level of enthusiasm. They don't all leave the way they came in. Who's fault would you like it to be?
So, if your daughter wants to be a cosmotologist when she gets into high school are you going to tell her 'no' because it isn't a worthy profession? Don't you ultimately want her to be happy and productive as an adult? What if she gets an engineering degree (because YOU want her to do so) after spending time and money in college but has to move back home to live with you because she can't find a job? How happy would that make her?
Teachers are there to teach, not train, otherwise they would be paid by the business sector and earn a hell of a lot more money than they do now. It would also be a more highly competitive profession with a lot more emphasis on the outcome. To try and fail is human and is all part of how we learn. To never try at all because you don't believe in yourself is truly the only failure you can never overcome.
It was confusing to my daughter because these kids were getting so much attention and were often not behaving correctly. She thought maybe she was doing something wrong, but really it was just that it was easier for the teacher to ignore her because she knew she would be "ok." And our teachers are not being judged on how much greater they can make a good student. They are expected to work miracles with the most difficult ones and also bring the others along. I agree with you that this does not make sense and I guess when I was writing my article I was thinking of kids on the same basic skill level, but I definitely agree that there needs to be a better way to separate them based on what they are able to do so the ones who need help will get it. Unfortunately, the Title I money that goes to the schools with kids who need help does not follow the student; it stays with the school. But, when the school does not make AYP, the kids are encouraged to leave for other schools without the funds.