WID-WID: March 2012
I Want It All
SOME is not a number, and SOON is not a time!
I can only tell you the first 17 words of the song made by the British rock group Queen. You’ll recognize the popular tune from commercials over the past decade. The lyrics to the song “I Want It All” capture the tone of my message for this WID-WID, Why I Do What I Do.
The first 17 words are - “I want it all, I want it all, I want it all and I want it now.” A recent report on the state of education for our masses has prompted my WIDWID for this month. Dropout rates are not improving. College attendance levels continue to decline and the pathways to education reform are blurred at best. We must not deceive ourselves. There is not a “gap” in academic performance. The reality is we are confronted with a canyon. The statistics are staggering. To use the term gap is an understatement. Let’s begin to treat the academic disparity as a canyon which places us all in harm’s way.
America responds when there is an apparent threat. Looking at our school performance disparity canyon should stir an alarm that we should consider as serious as homeland security just after a terrorist attack. We respond to apparent threats, war, Olympics or catastrophe. I maintain our country’s education falls in the same category – with one significant exception. The exception is the reality that the threat is not uniformly apparent to all. Segments of our social fabric have been able to insulate their family from direct impact of a declining educational system. Even the most privileged must understand the threat is there for all of us despite our social status. It is likely that America will not see full scale reform until the threat becomes equally apparent to everyone.
I choose not to wait! “I want it all, I want it all, I want it all and I want it now.” Although, St Philip’s enjoys a 100% high school graduation rate and a 93% college attendance rate, far too many youth of America are tumbling into a canyon of academic despair. “I want it all, I want it all, I want it all and I want it now.”
Formal education in America was nationally established in 1918. As we approach 100 years, we must acknowledge and act upon a “new now” in education. We can no longer accept some improvements that are promised to reveal themselves soon. Some is not a number and soon is not a time. We need definitive, quantitative and qualitative restructure with a precise timeline. Our children deserve it and at St. Philip’s and other private and charter schools as well, parents are demanding it. We must all take on the lyrics of the British rock group Queen. Let’s require excellence for all and demand it now.
Educating our children is not a rehearsal!
Forever Thankful,
Dr. Terry J. Flowers, Headmaster / Executive Director
St. Philip's School & Community Center
"The place where transformation is an everyday occurrence."
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