Driving the mom taxi service today, I found myself feeling something unexpected: hot. Looking at the thermometer, it read 67, but the sun was shining brightly with nary a cloud in the sky. My jeans-and-sweatshirt winter uniform felt quite out of place. I rolled the windows down a bit and wished that I had my husband's convertible for the day, except that wouldn't have fit the playdate-soccer carpool-fest. When we arrived at the field, I lingered for a moment, closed my eyes, and smelled flowers blooming. This was yet another day -- one of hundreds each year -- where I pinched myself to make sure that really, truly, I was here, living the dream in Silicon Valley.
Oh, and what a dream it is! I met my husband for lunch today and pitched him my lastest start-up idea: a life-improvement "ecosystem" akin to Google's campus, where families committed to education live, are employed, required to send their kids to school and to tutoring if minimum GPA requirements aren't met, offered the opportunity to attend parenting, nutrition, and other helpful classes, and, most importantly, prevented from ever viewing MTV. After reading about the teen pregnancy epidemic in Memphis, frankly, I'm surprised that no one has had the sense to take Teen Mom (and the other, like shows) off of the air. Gone are the days of "My So-Called Life" -- and here are the days of the glorification of the Bart Simpson "why try?" society. I'd like to build these "ecosystems" in each of the poorest towns in America, maybe starting in Memphis. Am I being extreme? Of course! But don't extreme times call for extreme measures? Think about this: do you think that in Memphis, there are 100 families who want better for their kids than teen pregnancy and appalling high school drop-out rates? I know there are! Do you think they want better jobs, better access to healthcare, better education, and better results? I know they do! So why not try a social experiment -- a boarding school for families, of sorts?
The likelihood of this idea ever getting traction is about zero, but I'm just distraught these days: distraught, most significantly, over the death of one of my personal heroes, Sargent Shriver. The dude lived to be 95, so, really, I should be less unsettled, but I heard him speak back in 1994 -- speak of how he wishes he were young with the world full of opporutunities that lay ahead. He spoke of a world where peace was raged rather than war, and where kids believed in things so fiercely that we would do whatever we could to guard those beliefs 'til our own deaths. And the sad thing is that the world Sargent Shriver envisioned then is so, so far from the world we're in almost 17 years later. We're in the land of Real Housewives and Teen Moms and the Jersey Shore. We're in the land of American Idol and The Apprentice. In other words, we're in the land of Everyone Wants to Be Famous for Nothing. Our schools suck yet more, which I didn't think was possible, and, instead of doing something about that, Republicans are focusing their efforts on repealing healthcare reform.
I think Republicans need to go to my "ecosystem" and learn a thing or two about what "normal" people want. They want jobs. They want healthcare (ahem). They want better education. They want a future for their kids that's better than what they have. They want to be part of the American dream. Repealing healthcare is a colossal waste of time since it's guaranteed to fail. They'll spend weeks attempting to break something and lack the balls to actually fix what's broken. Shame, shame, shame on the collective lot of our do-nothing politicians.
So anyway, I'm not pitching my idea to VCs or to angels or even to my friends. They'll think I'm batsh*t crazy (and already, probably, do). I realize that my "family boarding school" is but a pipe dream, but I do so wish that someone else could tell me how we're going to get communities to commit to education. It can be done, but it is so very hard. The worst schools are in the worst economic environments (but, as we saw in Waiting for Superman, many even in good neighborhoods kinda suck). How do we make it better? How do we stop more Memphises (which was Marbleheads just a few years ago)?
I'm not going to get discouraged. I'm going to polish my rose-colored glasses and get back to the important task of scheduling my kids for summer camp. I've signed Petunia up for one called "The Nature of Food," a camp in which she can study the localvore movement in agriculture. She'll plant a raised vegetable garden, visit a large-scale farm, learn about cheesemaking, and bake some bread. I've signed Dash up for three separate science camps, "Earth Explorations," one about habitats, and something else that involves hiking. And I'm overwhelmed by the feeling that I am so lucky, and so are they. I know how to scout out camps that are going to complement their education. I'm going to invest in this enrichment with money that I'm lucky to have. My kids attend top-notch schools, have amazing summer experiences, and are surrounded by a community that values education above much else. And in the back of my mind, I think: what about the kids who don't? Here in the land of perpetual summer, it's easy to be duped into thinking that everyone is living the dream. I always will feel grateful, lucky and oh-so-happy to be here in this dream world, but I won't be fooled.
To Sargent Shriver, and to myself, I made a commitment long ago, and that is to stand by a certain few of my beliefs until I die. I believe that the War on Poverty needs to be waged again in America, and I believe that it will only be won through education. I believe that education in Memphis should be as strong as it is in Palo Alto, that it should be as solid (and as funded) in West Virginia as it is in New York. How I'll channel those beliefs into action, I have no idea, but I'm ready to try.
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