A glimpse at Whitney Tilson

School Reform isn’t the only thing I want to talk about and explore with this blog, but I do believe it is one of the most important issues that needs immediate addressing. Whitney Tilson is an investor, writer, and philanthropist. (Thank you Wikipedia and the legal sharing of information). He is quite an amazing guy and has lead an interesting life.

Little bit of background: He is the only son of two educators who met in the Peace Corp (Whoa). I think it’s safe to say he grew up knowing the value and importance of education and giving back to one’s community. He majored in government and business, graduating from Harvard (Again, whoa!) After college he helped launch Teach for America, although I’m not sure the extent of his involvement. Nevertheless it is clear that the reformation of America’s educational system is a passion of Tilson’s. His posts in his blog, “Whitney Tilson’s School Reform Blog” often, at least weekly, and although he writes few posts himself, he references and links literature relating to the topic of school reform and provides a smidgen of his insight and opinion.

Tilson posts several times throughout the month but more often than not his posts are simply links to articles he finds interesting or articles that sadden him because a shitty educational thing happened. He has been posting since October 2005 and considering how long he’s been an advocate of educational reform, I’d say the things he finds interesting are pretty damn important.

In his post, “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior” (http://edreform.blogspot.com/2011/01/comments-on-why-chinese-mothers-are.html) I really got the sense of just how much he cares about this issue. He also (and I agree with him) doesn’t place all the blame on the education system. He addresses the lack in responsibility parents take in their children’s education. I think it’s very important that all aspects and causes of this problem are kept in mind and considered.

In a short post about the increase in private school’s tuition, I really saw the difference in our perspectives. Although we are both passionate about this issue Tilson is a proud father of three, graduated, and successful. And although I don’t know where he spent his early education, I’m assuming that with educators for parents it wasn’t a title 1 school like me. I am still a student and still am living through the consequences of not having the best early education. I find this difference in perspective and background refreshing and unique. Although Whitney can afford the best private schools for his own children his patriotism is not lost and he sees the importance in reforming the educational system for the future of America’s success.

                I look forward to reading the articles that he links to and picking apart his brain the rest of this semester. I can see that there’s a lot to learn from his example and because I was raised by a single mom (superwoman by the way) it’s comforting in a way I can’t really explain to know that this Dad cares so much about the future America his kids will grow up in. 

First Day of School

The first words a professor said to me in college, “I bet you all think you’re real smart, don’t you?” with a blatantly wry smile on his aged face. I was seventeen years old. Hopeful, idealistic, motivated. I was no stranger to the “big fish in a small pond becoming a small fish in a big sea” metaphor that counselors and teachers had warned the transition from high school to college would be like, but still was unwilling to take any heed of it. I was at the top of my class, teachers’ pet (plural), and had just gotten accepted to a top university.   

“I’m a 4 point plus student! College will be a breeze!”

This was my mindset. Ha! It’s almost comical now how naïve I was coming into college. Perhaps had I considered that I would be attending one of the top private engineering schools in the country, would be miles away from home and family, and ultimately would be competing with some of the most intelligent people I have ever come in contact with I would’ve taken myself off that high horse a bit.

Like most incoming freshmen, I lacked a certain grounding in reality. More specifically, I lacked a grounding in the reality of my own situation. I came from a single parent, below poverty line household. I went to a Title 1 Public School with under preforming standardized test scores. I was the only one out of over seven hundred in my graduating class to make it to the university that I did.

Now, I want to be clear. I had some AMAZING teachers in high school. Amazing. However, despite how good I thought my education had been, after the first few weeks of my first semester in University I found that I was grossly underprepared. And not just academically. I don’t know about you, but my family didn’t exactly have fifty grand lying around to cover that first year’s tuition. In fact, I’d be surprised if our family bank account had even a positive balance the day I left for school. But that’s all normal right?

Wrong.

“Yea, my dad was able to pay in full all four years of my tuition.”

Throat tightens. I’m sorry, what?!

“Oh, you come from a struggling household.”

Struggling? When had we ever struggled? Not once to my memory. I had a happy childhood. Feeling the dryers at the Laundromat to score the ones that were already hot. But everyone has memories like that?

I was an underdog, and came into the game on an uneven playing field. With the growing attention to the economic disparity in the United States in the news recently I was curious about others’ stories. Are these families like mine that are struggling? Just how lucky was I to make it out of the blackhole that is the public school system? When we start referring to the solutions to these problems as “Waiting for Superman” or winning “the Lottery” something ‘s not right. Going through almost four years of college being at this disadvantage can be a hollowing and exhausting experience, but watching documentaries like “Waiting for Superman” and seeing the benefits of programs like Teach for America, I think maybe we’re not as alone as we thought.