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It takes a village? I think not!
LELAND ACKER
A philosopher once said, "It takes a village to raise a child."

While this seems to be a good thought, and the local communities do a good job of supporting the local schools and education of our youth, the idea that a village can raise a child is not based on solid thinking. It may work well on a campaign trail, but here in the trenches, where we live life every day trying to provide a better way for our children, it simply does not work.

The Jacksonville Independent School District is a prime example. During my days as a student there, we had passionate teachers who lived to provide students with the best possible education, hopefully preparing them for college. My algebra teacher, the late Mr. Larry Sanford, could take the most mathematically challenged kids and get them to understand basic algebra concepts. Mrs. Jan Gowin, biology teacher, told us at the beginning of the school year that she held high standards for us and we were expected to meet them. (I don't know which was harder, Danny Long's "Indian-Maker" offseason football program, or her biology class).

These teachers, among others who worked the same way, set high standards for their students then worked to help them meet those standards.

With the caliber of faculty Jacksonville enjoyed during the 1980s and 1990s, the support the schools had from the local community and the opportunities which opened for young people during that time, every student should have been a glowing success, if the idea of "It takes a village were true."

While some Jacksonville graduates advanced to country music stardom, the National Football League, Major League Baseball, working for the GOP in Washington, D.C. and columnists for award-winning weekly newspapers, many Jacksonville graduates did not. While most managed to find work and build lives locally, some Jacksonville graduates went on to incarceration and premature deaths.

What was the difference? How did one of my school-mates go to the NFL, while another went to TDCJ? Because even in its hey-day, an education at Jacksonville ISD was only as good as the efforts put forth by the students and parents. To be successful in any institution of education, parents and students have to know what tools the student needs in order to be successful, and how to acquire those tools at school. The greats successfully navigated the system, the mediocre and failures either survived the system or dropped out.

The difference in most cases, I would presume, would be parenting. I would wager that if you examined the greatest successes coming out of Jacksonville, you'd find them backed up by solid parenting, not a good village (though Jacksonville has a good village). It doesn't take a village to raise a child, it takes good parenting.

"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it." - Proverbs 22:6. chreporter@mediactr.com