Texas School Business: Young's Inbox

Write down something to yourself or to someone else. Say something meaningful to an audience. That meaningful something becomes you. Your sentiments guide your every step, based on one simple motivator: not to be “outed” as a hypocrite.

One can go on the record in countless ways: in a letter, on a petition, on a canvas, in a song.

In Waco ISD, students at Lake Waco Montessori have gone on the record to say something meaningful to them: The “r” word stinks. They have taken up the cause in an effort to convince others to swear off the word “retard.” Now, we all know that retard as a verb has a perfectly good and clinical use in physiology and other “-ologies.” But it’s not perfectly good the way children and some adults use it.

The Lake Waco Montessori crusade has drawn the attention of the Texas Special Olympics, which has its own campaign to wipe out the “r” word. The Special Olympics chose the Waco school to carry the torch for this good notion. The Waco students — pre-K through eighth grade — carried that flame all the way to New York and the Global Action Citizenship Project conference. Their plea on behalf of their fellow students (36 students at the Montessori school are developmentally challenged) reportedly brought tears to the eyes of some in the audience.

As important as is the cause carried by these thoughtful youngsters, what I’m really interested in here are the dynamics of their act. It’s not necessarily what they are doing, but that they are doing it. These children are making something of their own cloth, something that will define them for a lifetime.

Reading, writing, computing — we need these skills to survive in a mean-streets economy. But these skills alone do not make well-rounded, confident individuals. We hear all the time about how America is falling behind in producing scientists, technicians and more. But no one becomes anything special by simply focusing on the tools of the intellectual trade. Ultimately, someone has to establish a sort of identity, some confidence to step out and stand for something. Someone has to create a product of self-realization. Someone has to go on the record.

When my oldest son was in a middle school that was still in its formative stages, I was bothered that the campus didn’t have a student council. To a few adults, the idea seemed antiquated, and possibly pointless. Wasn’t it simply an expression of a pecking order and a reason to give accolades to already popular kids? My answer: It would depend on what the kids on the council did. Would they take the opportunity to make a difference on their campus? And even if they focused on things we adults considered trivial — like a school dance or a car wash — the process itself would be their expression. The students would organize it; they would dictate the event’s terms of success or failure. I’m glad I advocated for the cause, because the student council became a reality and a lot of young people got one additional self-actualizing experience at that school.

Like the kids who took an important message to New York, the virtue is in the doing, the acting, the reinforcement of seeing one’s impetus move people. Yes, a child’s impetus.

These children have come to realize that they — we — are not powerless. We can make a difference simply by being smart and expressive. Children can do things that matter, long before anyone expects consequential things of them. Years from now, Lake Waco kids will not remember what they did to prep for a certain test; they will remember that they went to New York to spark a conversation. They will remember going on the record. And what they said all those years ago will still be regulating their actions.

JOHN YOUNG is a columnist for Cox Newspapers. You can see more of his work at www.johnyoungcolumn.com or send an email to jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.