Little Johnny and Barry Don’t Know How to Read

I get it. No one likes change. We will cling relentlessly to the wrong ideas and notions, hoping against hope that they will somehow land us where we seek to go.

But that’s not how life works. Change is sometimes necessary. About eight years ago, on a day very much like today, I sat down and said, “I’m just not happy. I want to do more with my life. I want to inspire change.” Seriously. I thought this. I wanted to become a tool for change. And that thought somehow managed to change the course of my life and I left reporting to become a teacher.

I remembered sitting in classes and thinking, “This has absolutely nothing to do with me.” I didn’t feel smart. I couldn’t fathom the opportunities that would be available to me with a good education. Two of my best friends in school, Angie and Stephanie, were geniuses as far as I was concerned. And I wanted so much to be like them. But I just couldn’t see it. Instead I became what society, my community, told me I was supposed to be. I became a young bride with no education other than a high school diploma and one endless job after another, all of which I hated. Because, even then, I had this feeling that “I’m not happy here. I can do better.”

Sometimes we have to admit defeat and just start all over again. I’ve done that many times in my life. And, always, I ended up feeling more fulfilled than before. I don’t’ want to say happy because happiness is a choice. But true fulfillment sometimes requires change.

Okay, so where am I going with this? Well, like I felt eight years ago, I’ve been battling this feeling of “I’m just not happy here.” I feel like I’m not doing anything worthwhile. I’m giving my all in a situation where I feel like I no longer belong. Am I afraid to change? No. For years, I’ve been trying to change a system that is severely broken. The educational system. I went into teaching thinking I could relate to the students and I could convince them that opportunities existed for them. But after years of battling within a system that values numbers over educating the individual child, I just don’t feel like I belong here anymore. I am trying to reach children who have already made up their minds that they don’t need an education to succeed; I am trying to acquire the lingo for a system that’s so broken the insides of it resemble a social club or fraternity reunion; I am trying to achieve purpose in my life when parents give up on their children at birth and the schools seem never to have wanted to be agents of change to begin with.

Why do I say that? What proof do I have? A large percentage of black children in a high school setting who are reading on a second or third grade level. And the solution, put more pressure on teachers to produce the numbers the schools need to show they are growing students. No one wants to be the one to say, okay, this shit is broken. We’ve been doing it wrong and it is time to start over. So, I’ll say it. Our educational system is broken beyond repair. We have to start over. We need to go back to the drawing board, find new people who value educating and not teaching to a standardized test, and freaking start over. It’s hard to admit we’ve been doing things wrong for years, I know it. But it’s insanity to continue to do the same things, seeing the disastrous results and hoping for different outcomes.

We don’t send police into the streets

armed with only rubber bullets

and no gun. No one would trust a surgeon

who’s best work is done using plastic cutlery.

So why the hell is no one upset

when a tenth grade student can’t read?

Why is it okay for you to send me

into battle every day

to serve children who don’t know

what a sentence is?

Barry is well-versed in the language

of the streets, but he can’t identify

the verb in the sentence:

The man rotted in prison because

he didn’t ever learn to read.

The system is crumbling

it’s full of cracks and bricks

all ill-fit in the face of a wall

But while the wall is falling

we can’t see the walls for the

buildings. Seventy percent

is nothing to sneeze at. I’m not a

mathematical genius but I can

read the message in the numbers

and it’s time to admit

we’re bleeding ignorance

into the streets and

tearing down the possibilities

in favor of building prisons.

It’s politically incorrect to say to a

parent of a ninth grader

who stumbles over words and meaning

in a Junie B. Jones reader, “Why

don’t you sit yo ass down and teach

him to read?” But it’s socially acceptable

to point the finger of blame

at the cogs in the machine

that churn out ill-prepared graduates

at the rate that General Motors

produces Chevrolets.

Prisons will be constructed

based on the fact that

little Barry can’t read

by the time he reaches fifth grade

but we’re afraid to hold a

conversation to admit we’ve

screwed up and that we need to

start over again. We’d rather keep

stewing in the shit stew we have made.

How many bodies must we invest

in a world of freedom

that will never benefit

those of us

living in communities where

it’s the norm to pass children on

to the next grade while ignoring their

most basic need—the ability to read?

We’d never send soldiers into battle

with seeds and shovels

nor would we elect a president

who can’t read a story to his son

before he goes off to bed, but we

embrace and accept a system

that touts numbers:

67 percent show proficiency

80 percent graduation rate

$5 million in scholarships,

but not a damn student who’s ready

for college because Barry has never

learned how to read.