What's Your Motivation?

It has been an interesting journey so far, on the road to freedom...

I think freely, and therefore learn to live freely...but it takes time to get adjusted. Living and fraternizing with slaves for so long, it really wears on your soul and your perspective. You can have a grand awakening, and then smaller, subsequent awakenings after that for the rest of your life.

I was talking to a wise man (the first thing you need to travel the road), and as we discussed public education, I asked a question that had been pressing on my heart for a long time:

As a product of 'gifted and talented' public schools, I actually received a competetive education, and am intellectually competant, unlike many to most (depending on who you ask) public school graduates in this country. My elementary/middle school in particular was created to compete with private schools, and the curriculum was much more demanding. It was standard to take pre-Algebra in the 6th grade, and I felt like that was a little late...

Higher achievement was a standard, and the curriculum works. Many of the graduates of both my primary and secondary schools go on to Yale, Harvard, and the like. So my question was, 'why then, if there is a curriculum in public schools that is working, is it not just standardized? White public schools in my state use similar curriculums; are 'gifted and talented' Black students only as good as average White students? If this program wis working with Black children, why not open it up to all?'

Then the wise man said something that made me think deeply. He said, 'You are still under the assumption that they want your children to learn.'

I must admit, I have been one to wear the rose-colored glasses, and I, as a former slave, had not though much about the business of poverty and ignorance before I beagn to seek out freedom. It didn't occur to me that those in charge who claimed that they were doing all they can were not. I understood that there was and is still systemic racism, but I did not understand how deep those roots had come to grow. I never thought that people, even on the ground and grass-roots levels, were really as unconcerned with the development of young Black minds as others had accused them of being.

The wise man said, 'Think about it; as young as you are, if you can see that, don't you think that those with the power to do what you asked can see it, too? They don't care about your children; they care about theirs. And they don't make money when your children are adequately educated...'

The ordeal causes me to remember some really good advice a friend gave me a few years ago. She told me, when confronted with people or issues with the potential to affect me, to ask, "What's Your Motivation?" There are lots of people who claim lots of things, but you can sift out the lies and the liars by simply analyzing what a person's motivations must be.

I must admit, I had only been applying the formula selectively. I am back on the investigative hunt, seeking the truth more fervently, with a renewed sense of purpose. No one cares about my baby but my husband and me, so, although he is much too young to attend school, I have to get back on the ball, checking these places out now. I started when I was pregnant (I moved to a new city not long before I became pregnant), but I admit, I had become slack in those efforts.

But no more - my motivation is the welfare of my family. The powers that be don't care about my family a bit more than the man in the moon - and they're not supposed to. That's my job. So, I am off to work for the sake of what motivates me.

What's your motivation?

I.C. Jackson
http://northstar.icjackson.com