The take home message.

I came across a column several years ago by Dave Eggers - founder of 826 Valencia - about our education system. One section in particular stuck out to me:

It's like a tic. Or a reflex. (Are tics and reflexes significantly different?) The point is, it's an automatic response, in virtually all humans, to think that things are getting worse. Medieval peasants lamented how good the Cro-Magnons had it; people in the Renaissance looked back on the Dark Ages with great fondness. This is a harmless enough reflex--lazy and uncritical, sure, but usually harmless enough.

But when it concerns how we see young people, and how we perceive the landscape of learning and literacy, this kind of doomsaying is a dangerous kind of intellectual sloth. When we assume, as most adults do, that kids are less literate, less interested in books, than ever before, it involves a willful kind of ignorance, and it imperils how we educate young people.

When we started this program, we got more than a few wide eyed looks anytime we mentioned that STRIDES would be using 5k training to reduce suicide risk factors among high school students. Running? Are you sure? We took these comments in stride - trying not to doubt the premise of our program before we even began.

To be sure, there have been grumbles and complaints along the way. It's too hot. I forgot my running shoes. But on the whole, most kids on most days like the running. They like how they feel at the end of a workout, they like beating that "2:30 feeling," they like the challenge.

The argument in Eggers' column applies to more than youth literacy efforts. We can go on believing that things will get worse, that kids are lazy, that they don't try. Or we can put some faith in kids - they deserve it - and try to make the 'it gets better' message real.

We are less than two weeks away from our culminating event - the STRIDES Community 5k Run/Walk. Please consider supporting the students in our program by joining them on November 21 at Dockweiler.