America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great (7 page)

Could it be that the father of our nation was not only talking to the people who were his contemporaries, but was also providing a word of encouragement and warning for future generations?

O
N MY FIRST DAY
in Mrs. McQueen’s bright, cheery kindergarten class at Detroit’s Fisher Elementary School, all students were required to bring a rug on which to sit while we happily learned new songs, games, and facts all day long. Since my mother was (and still is) so thrifty, she was able to supply one for me in spite of the fact that we didn’t have much money. At the time, I didn’t think about the fact that it probably came from either Goodwill or the Salvation Army; I was simply excited about the new experience and the opportunity to play with so many other children.

Kindergarten, first, second, and the first half of third grade were not particularly rigorous. School was mostly fun and games, I was an average student, and life was peaceful. After my parents got divorced and we were forced to move to Boston, we lived in a tenement not far from Franklin Park and the Zoo. My brother, Curtis, and I walked through the park every morning on our way to a parochial school, which had only two classrooms. There were four grades in each classroom, and all eight grades were taught by only two teachers. Consequently, the vast majority of our time was spent singing songs and playing games.

By the time my mother, Curtis, and I moved back to Detroit, I had essentially lost a year of school while in Boston, my academic performance lagging far behind that of my new classmates. To make matters worse, I was the only black kid in the class. In those days in Detroit, academic expectations for a black boy were not very high, particularly in a predominantly white school. After every quiz, each student had to report his or her score out loud for the teacher to record, and classmates always snickered after I
announced my abysmally low scores. Although they teased me a great deal about this, none of them ever had to worry about getting the lowest score on a test as long as I was in the classroom. You might say I served as the class safety net.

Needless to say, my self-esteem began to follow my academic expectations of myself in a downward spiral. I would even laugh along with others at some of the jokes about me. To cope with the ridicule, I smiled a lot and tried to adopt a nonchalant attitude about being the class dummy. I secretly admired those who always knew the answers and were the last ones out in the spelling bees. I never imagined that I could be smart, let alone win a spelling bee. The low expectations everyone had for me — including my own expectations of myself — would certainly have predicted a dismal future for me.

Fortunately my mother, with her third-grade education, was terrified that because of our poor academic performance both my brother and I would end up with low-paying menial jobs as she had. She didn’t know what to do to help change our path, so she asked God to give her wisdom on how to inspire her sons to work hard and make something of themselves. That’s when she came up with the idea of turning off the television and making us read two books apiece from the Detroit public libraries each week. She also made us submit to her written book reports, which of course she could not read, but we didn’t know that. Her friends told her that her sons would grow up to hate her, but that did not matter to her, as long as we were successful.

I didn’t hate Mother, but in the beginning I sure hated reading those books. After a while, however, I actually began to look forward to them, because they afforded me a fantastic escape from our everyday poverty and sense of hopelessness. There in the city, books about nature captivated me. First I read
Chip
,
The Dam Builder
, then other animal stories over the years up to Jack London’s
Call of the Wild
as my reading ability increased. I began to imagine myself as a great explorer or scientist or doctor. I learned things no one else around me knew. Every single day my knowledge of our world expanded, which excited me to no end. And since I was constantly reading, I became a much better speller and started becoming competitive in the spelling bees.

Once I started believing I was smart, I really didn’t care that much about what anybody else thought about me, and I became consumed with a desire to increase my learning far beyond that of my classmates. The more I read biographies about those who had made significant accomplishments in life,
the more I wanted to emulate them. By the time I reached the seventh grade, I reveled in the fact that the same classmates who used to taunt me were now coming to me, asking how to solve problems or spell words. Once the joy of learning filled my heart, there was no stopping me.

Many of the teachers at Southwestern High School in Detroit were excellent, but they rarely had the opportunity to demonstrate how good they were because so much of classroom time was wasted handling disciplinary problems. I remember seeing teachers in tears because of the treatment they received from students trying to show off for others. Things almost turned violent when a substitute was once unfortunate enough to be cast into the “den of lions.” The young teacher assigned to one of my history classes had the glasses, tweed jacket, brown shoes, and short pants to suggest that he was a nerd, and the students could not wait to begin tormenting him with odd noises, paper wads, and wisecracks. He became so frustrated that he left the room, and the assistant principal had to come restore order. The same scenario was repeated over and over again in my biology class with Mr. McCotter, a very nice man with a big heart, who wanted nothing more than to impart a solid education to the students who mercilessly tormented him. In spite of the resistance he faced, he never left the class and continued trying to teach against the odds. Given the challenges facing teachers such as these, it isn’t hard to understand why Detroit has such low high school graduation rates.
¹

In spite of her exhaustion from working to make ends meet, Mother was dedicated to making sure Curtis and I would buck the trend, and if we were still up when she arrived home from work, she never neglected to ask what we had learned in school that day. Because of all the reading she had encouraged me to do, I was very motivated to learn and took it upon myself to achieve a first-class education in a second-class environment. I would go back after school to talk to any teacher whose lesson had been derailed by interruptions and ask, “What were you planning to teach today?” They would of course be delighted to share with me what they had prepared, and very much appreciated someone benefiting from their hard work.

Dedicated to placing myself in positions in which my education would flourish, I subsequently became the biology laboratory assistant and was responsible for setting up the laboratory experiments. This meant that, regardless of what lessons did or did not take place in class on any given day, I learned them nevertheless. Not long after that, I began helping set up some of the chemistry and physics laboratories as well.

My own initiative to learn was also encouraged by many of my teachers,
who had a profound effect on my education. Mrs. Miller, one of my English teachers, took a strong interest in my academic performance and had tremendous influence in my life, frequently acting as a barrier between me and my recurrent desire to be part of the crowd. And many of my other teachers encouraged me to take part in the regional forensics contests, citywide competitions in which students from various schools had an opportunity to recite poetry or dramatic prose before an audience who rated them in terms of style and effectiveness. There I acquired a great deal of confidence in my ability to speak in public.

I also received help and guidance to participate in many of the citywide and statewide science fairs. These competitions exposed me to students from more affluent areas who were considerably more advanced than I was, inspiring me to work even harder.

One need look no further for public servants than the many public school teachers around our country. The vast majority of them not only pour themselves tirelessly into their work for the sake of their students, they also forgo all kinds of recognition and financial compensation to do so. When I won a scholarship to Interlochen, one of the most prestigious music camps in the country, instead of being elated that Southwestern High School had finally produced this level of musical talent, my band teacher, Mr. Doakes (who went on to become Dr. Doakes), advised me not to accept the scholarship “because it would interfere with my preparation to become a great doctor one day.” He was willing to forgo a huge feather in his own cap for the sake of my career. Teachers like him were not uncommon as I was growing up, and it is one of the reasons why I have so much respect and admiration for teachers today.

Intending to become a citizen of the world, I extended my own education far beyond the school’s curriculum. I began frequenting art museums, historical societies, and many of the collections and galleries found on campuses of local colleges and universities. I became quite an expert in identifying classical music, and both art and music remain an important part of my life today.

Through education, I was completely changed to become a productive citizen of the world. And what is true in the life of one is true in the life of whole communities and entire nations: education has the power to transform. I firmly believe that the solid public education system established in the American colonies centuries ago was largely responsible for our nation’s rapid rise on the world stage in the areas of economics, innovation, and industry. And what was possible then is still possible today.

Whenever an election is at hand, there is a lot of talk about the importance of education — but with a national high school dropout rate of 30 percent, we do not seem to be making much progress. A lot of talk may be just what it is. Our society is quite willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a new stadium for the city’s football or baseball team, while leaving many of the same city’s public schools in a dilapidated condition with tattered books — and in some cases no books at all. Our young people see through this hypocrisy and tend to emulate what they
see
more than what they are
told
.

It was not always like this, however. Our nation’s founders placed so much emphasis on education that towns in Massachusetts could actually be fined for not providing adequate public education. As early as 1642, a law was passed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony making education a requirement for children.
²
Compulsory education was much slower to reach the southern states,
³
and education of slaves was forbidden.
⁴
The very fact that powerful men in the South went to great lengths to prevent slaves from gaining an education makes it clear that they fully understood how empowering education can be. This fact alone should encourage anyone who is poor, weak, and/or powerless to direct all their energy toward obtaining an education.

The fact of the matter is, our founding fathers were highly educated individuals, many of whom had extensive personal libraries — and most of them had a vast knowledge of world history. They were not people of average intelligence. And as they were crafting the policies of our new nation, they designed a system that would work well only with an educated populace. This is why they emphasized the importance of a solid education.

In fact, when Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville arrived in America in 1831 to decipher the secrets of our enormous economic success, he was so taken with our school system that he wrote extensively about what he saw as a unique and powerful tool to fuel a productive new nation. Unlike schools in Europe, American schools taught the children values, he noticed, and there was extensive use of the holy Bible in public schools. He wrote in
Democracy in America
:

He was particularly impressed by the fact that anyone finishing the second grade could read and write quite well. Even when he explored the frontiers, he was astonished to find common men engaging in intelligent conversation, reading the newspaper, and understanding the various branches of government. He also reflected:

To gain a real appreciation of what children were expected to know in early America, one has only to look up an exit exam from middle school grades during the nineteenth century. I suspect that many, if not most, college graduates today would fail that test. Some sample questions:

• Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
  
• Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, and 1865.
  
• Show the territorial growth of the US.
  
• Name and locate the principal trade centers of the US.
  
• Name all the republics of Europe and give the capital of each.
  
• Describe why the Atlantic Coast is colder than the Pacific at the same latitude.
  

Over the ensuing decades, the American system of public education was admired throughout the world because of the quality of its products — its very citizens, well educated and ready to engage with the growth of their new nation.