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| by A. David Dahmer |
| December 13, 2012 |
“There are all kinds of issues —social welfare, poverty — but we too often say, “Sorry. That’s their problem,’ said 9-time Grammy-award-winning R&B musician John Legend. “But that’s when the problem never gets solved. And ‘sorry’ is going to creep into your neighborhood. It’s going to creep into your city and affect your property values and affect a lot of things that matter to you.”
You can’t run from it, Legend added, because it affects all of us. “One of the things I think the [presidential] election made clear was the idea of ‘Those people over there; we’re not going to worry about them.’ That was a losing proposition,” Legend said. “And it’s not just losing for the election, it’s losing for this country. That’s not the way we need our leaders to look at this country. We need our business leaders and our political leaders all to say, ‘We care about the overall welfare of this country and that means in my neighborhood and in those neighborhoods, too.”
Two major advocates for education reform — Legend and Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Children's Zone in New York — participated in an hour-long discussion moderated by local television journalist Neil Heinen at the Alliant Energy Center as part of the Urban League of Greater Madison’s Educate to Elevate VIP Luncheon Dec. 6.
“What John and I have found when it comes to education reform — I don’t care where we are — is that you have a system in place that is impervious to reform and it knows exactly what it is doing which is convincing all of you that nothing can be done,” said Canada.
“We have a serious problem, particularly in this country,” Legend said. “There are other countries that are similar in wealth, power, and influence on the global arena that are doing a much better job of educating their kids than we are. We’re falling behind as a nation. A lot of that is happening in communities where people disproportionately have the least resources and the least political power. These people are being underserved by our education system. We have failed to give them the tools they need to succeed in life.:
Legend is the founder of the Show Me Campaign whose mission is to break the cycle of poverty using solutions that have been proven to improve people’s lives and to give them the opportunities to survive, thrive, and succeed. “For me, I started the Show Me Campaign because I wanted to focus on people in poverty and getting them out of poverty,” Legend said. “The more that I read and talked to folks, the more I saw that an area that I was passionate about —an area that had such a positive impact on my own life — was education. We can lift people out of poverty if we can give them a good education.
It’s been a hot topic here in Madison the past couple of years as an alarming achievement gap continues to plague Madison’s school district and the Madison community has begun working to address it.
“I absolutely believe that there is a science to education,” Canada said. “Those of us who have tried to close the achievement gap within the current confines of the educational system have failed — good teachers. I won’t pick on Madison. You can pick any big city and I will show you the 30 superintendents they had in the last 40 years — great credentials and degrees. But they all failed; every single one of them. You can’t name one. They’ve all failed because they tried to change this within the confines of a system where the physics doesn’t work.”
In his 20-plus years with Harlem Children's Zone, Inc., Canada has become nationally recognized for his pioneering work helping children and families in Harlem and as a passionate advocate for education reform. Since 1990, Mr. Canada has been the president and Chief Executive Officer for Harlem Children's Zone, which The New York Times Magazine called "one of the most ambitious social experiments of our time."
“You give a kid who is poor and two years behind in reading and [the teacher] has to catch that kid up to kids who are wealthy and are at grade-level in reading and you give [the teacher] the same amount of time and resources? If a trade leaves Madison at 10 a.m. heading north at 30 miles an hour and another train leaves Madison at noon traveling north at 30 miles an hour, when will train B catch train A? Never!
“You want to close this achievement gap, but there is a list of things that you can’t do,” continued Canada. “You can’t get rid of lousy teachers, you can’t have a longer school day, and you can’t have a longer school year. Fix this! Every city in America has tried and every city in America has failed. Real reform requires real professionals to come in and do whatever is necessary to get that group of kids to be successful — a no-excuse attitude.”
Heinen asked about the politics behind it all. Canada flatly stated that he is a Democrat. “But the ideals around ‘supporting labor’ means that you can’t talk about any of these issues around education,” Canada said. “Part of this is the politics of power. We’re not talking about privatization or don’t put public dollars into it. But let’s allow some innovation and experimentation. Let’s try some stuff. Let’s hold some people accountable. Let’s get rid of some lousy people. This is not heavy stuff. These are really moderate things, but the climate has been so resistant to change that it sounds revolutionary.
“I keep saying that this is not Republican and this is not Democrat; this is ‘save our kids,’” Canada said. “I want to save your kids here. I don’t know how they are going to vote. They could all grow up to become Republicans….. I’m good with that… I don’t care… I just want them to be smart.
“In fact, I think we need more smart Republicans,” Canada added as the crowd laughed.
“We need an educated citizenry to have a functioning Democracy,” Legend chimed in. “We need our people in the U.S. to have critical thinking skills — these are things they learn in school. And don’t think that there aren’t other countries out there thinking, ‘We can catch those guys.’ Because they are. And a lot of those countries have schools that are doing better than ours.”
Canada addressed the leadership of Madison telling them that there is no future in allowing huge numbers of its citizens to fail.
“If you don’t get in this, you’re going to watch your city disappear. I’ve seen it. You know what? Those numbers of increasing people? That ain’t going nowhere. It’s not like suddenly they’re going to move somewhere else. I’m being serious about this. Something is happening in America that people are in denial about. We had an election and people woke up and weere like, ‘What? There are blacks and Latinos and Asians? And they all voted?’
“But people are in denial about what is happening in America,” he continued. “This is no longer a white country. You have to understand that if you let these kids fail, you’re letting your country fail, you’re letting your city fail. Since it’s a new thing, people get all shaken up about it. Oh, my goodness. What did he just say? But this is happening all over America. Part of the challenge is that people need to know that this is intolerable.
“If you want to bury your city. If you want to create a black hole in your city that sucks all of the tax dollars into jails and prisons and welfare and food stamps and you’re not creating wealth and real opportunities ….. then keep allowing the education to fail in your system,” he continued. “I decided not in Harlem. I don’t know where else it’s going to happen, but here we’re going to educate these kids and turn this around.”
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