For some reason, the Inquirer has started running Chris Satullo's columns on Saturday, which is unfortunate since I'm guessing that readership of the Saturday papers is probably far lower than the Sunday paper where Satullo's columns previously appeared.
Thanks to the power of "the internets" we can read it whenever we want.
In this column, Satullo, among several other very good points, makes one especially important point that I've tried to make in the past:
The mayor's college focus, while dead-on, runs headlong into a Philadelphia quirk.
In a city where so few have degrees, many get prickly when told that their kids need something they themselves never had. They think that's elitist, stuck-up, even racist.
"Not everyone is college material." That phrase cropped up often in Dec. 2 forums on the Knowledge Economy agenda, which set a sheepskin goal less gaudy than Nutter's. True, not everyone is cut out for campus. But a radically higher percentage of the city's youth must be, if a city whose economy hinges on education and health care wants to soar. College needn't mean Harvard; the fine community college offers a wealth of practical degrees.
I came at it from a slightly different direction:
The only way large scale change will happen is if we dedicate ourselves to the proposition that every single child, from birth, needs to be prepared to go to college... and get that liberal arts education. That means no more "college isn't for everyone" attitudes from parents and teachers. Aside from being degrading and, in many cases, racist, it's just a way of giving up. Parents, teachers and the students need to try harder and be given every possible resource to make it happen.
So, yes, Nutter has a-whole-lotta obstacles in his path as he tries to accomplish what Satullo calls "Big Hairy Audacious Goal" number 2. By writing about this city's tendency to fall back on the excuse that "college isn't for everyone" in the public forum of his column, Satullo exposes that attitude to the sunlight that could hopefully start to kill it. It'll be up to Nutter to change it so that every child born in Philadelphia, no matter what the conditions around his or her birth, has adults in his or her life, from day one, who strive to make college - Harvard, Community, whatever - the number one goal for that child.*
(*not to mention, the number one goal of every undereducated person in this city who wants to create a better life for themselves and their families)
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