Building a Culture Takes Time, Effort

This column appears in the February 2011 issue of Excelsior.

 

Isaac and Sarah, Joseph and Ella, Nathan and Frances, Grandma Cassie, Nana, Becky, Kit and Harry, Betty and Harry, Ruth, Lew, Lou and Julia....and so many more....

They of blessed memory, may they rest in peace.

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It takes a long time to create a culture. Sometimes when I get impatient with our pace in creating a college-going culture, one in which all children are prepared for college, I think back about the many significant influences on me in my own family, some a few decades old, some dating back more than a century, long before I was born. I think back on family members who were building a family culture, cross generations, whether they realized it or not.

I think about Joseph and Ella, adult immigrants, all five of whose children graduated from high school more than three-quarters of a century ago, at a time when one in six children did so, and who managed to save so that one of their children could go to college.  All seven grand-children would graduate from college, the seeds for the success planted years earlier by the grandparents and their forebears.

I think of Harry, son of immigrants, the only member of his family of ten to go to college, who didn't graduate as the Great Depression began but who with his wife, Kit, filled the house with books and created a home where literacy--language development, reading, and writing--and music were valued and nurtured. Their children, too, would go on to college and college success.

As you do, I stand on the shoulders of so many people, many long dead. I can't pay most of these people back, can't pay them back, but sure can pay forward to help others.

As we begin a new year, let us remember that every time a child learns to read, every time a child learns to write, every time that all members of a family can read well, every time a student graduates from high school, first in his or her family to do so, every time a young man or woman goes to college, first in his or her family to do so, every time a tutor tutors, a mentor mentors, a church, temple, or mosque steps up to serve children, every time a person comes out of retirement to help a child rise up, we get one step closer to a community culture, a college-going culture, a literacy community, which we will be proud to leave to and for our children. Let us remember that as we begin a new year.

 

Michael F. Rice, Ph.D.

Superintendent

Kalamazoo Public Schools