Little Urban Achievers Have Necessary Means

Now, I’ve read this whole story. I have not read the whole story to you, but I’ve read the whole story — and have you heard this journalist go out and talk to somebody who finds problems with this? No! I’m sorry, as a guy who does play-by-play of the news, that’s the first thing that stood out at me. In every story, even when something is profoundly good, the media’s got to find a critic. They’ve got to go out and find somebody who disagrees — and the person who disagrees is usually lauded, especially when it comes to something like character education. This story does not go find critics. This is purely a profile of this place, and at this place, in when I read, what did you not hear about in this school? You didn’t hear about money. You didn’t hear about federal education grants. You didn’t hear about anybody not being able to do this if the federal government didn’t redo the education bill.
It isn’t about money. This is about just a decent education, and there’s nobody in this story that is saying, “It’s all about money. We couldn’t do it without money.” This is just the result of an idea. Somebody had an idea of how to change a school and the way it’s practiced. It’s a private school, and there are grants to get into the thing, of course, but it is not oriented around money. It’s not run by people who say, “We can’t do this if we don’t have the right kind of money,” and this line, “We don’t want to love children into failure,” you know what that means? Let me translate this for you, because the way it has come to be translated in the public schools today, “We don’t want to love children into failure,” what that means is, “We’re not going to sit there and be so worried that we don’t hurt their feelings that when they’re wrong, we don’t tell ’em. If they’re wrong, we’re going to tell ’em. We’re going to team ’em. We’re going to teach ’em the right things. We’re not going to just going to say, ‘Whatever you want, kids.’ We’re not going to try to spare their feelings. We’re just going to each ’em things.” We’re not going to love them into failure. I think that’s a fabulous line.
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