I did some soul-searching in order to respond openly to “What’s wrong with American high schools; Our schools were conceived decades ago to meet the needs of another age; It’s time for a serious redesign” (Commentary, March 4), by Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft and co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
I feel guilt-ridden that so few people seem to care.
Gates said, “Until we design high schools to meet the needs of the 21st Century, we will keep limiting–even ruining–the lives of millions of Americans every year.”
Yes it is criminal how many lives we ruin within our schools.
Instead of boosting our young people’s self-esteem, we destroy it.
Gates held before us: “We have one of the highest high school dropout rates in the industrialized world.”
Why can’t we prepare and train teachers to ignite enthusiasm for learning and nurture the individual student’s gift and talents?
Each child brings gifts into the world, which can be useful to society–even disabled children; they teach us true humility, courage and faith.
Gates claimed: “We can put a stop to this. We designed those high schools; we can redesign them.”
Our high schools are designed to offer children unequal opportunities.
What a mockery to our democratic values.
Here is a case study of how one child was lucky to “escape” the fangs and emotional ruin of the Chicago Public Schools.
My daughter, Heidi Musser, was born totally blind–no form, no color and no light from Day 1 of her life.
At the tender age of 3 1/2 years, a school psychologist, who was apparently scared of total darkness, affixed the label “can’t be educated” to her name.
In order to remove this label and prove the test-giver wrong, my husband and I had to take her out of school to educate her at home during most of her elementary school years.
I taught myself Braille and then taught her.
In her freshman year in high school, she became a semi-finalist in a citywide piano competition; she was a proud student of Chicago Symphony principal pianist Mary Sauer for more than 10 years.
As a high school freshman, she was considered too fragile to participate in athletic endeavors, and she had to sit and listen to someone read about health and fitness, while her sighted peers were active in sports.
Heidi has proven herself as an athlete.
She received a gold medal as the first blind female completing an Olympic distance triathlon in the 1999 Triathlon World Championships in Montreal.
She completed successfully two “Escape from Alcatraz” Triathlons, and now she is training for Ironman Idaho in June.
Her courage inspired her California-based guide, Matt Miller, to start up the C Different Foundation, so more blind athletes can find support for participating in triathlon races totally integrated with the sighted and able-bodied.
Miller has rebuilt Heidi’s self-esteem to an all-time high.
Heidi holds a bachelor of arts degree from Northeastern Illinois University.
Frustrated by the lack of availability of Braille books for her blind students, whom she tutors in Braille, she took on the task to raise funds to create the Jeanne and Paul Simon Braille Book Collection–now considered the largest Braille book youth collection in the State of Illinois–at the Skokie Public Library.
No obstacle can be too big or too hard.
Let us join hands to rescue many more high school students.
