Graduate Commencement Address – Wheelock College
By Hubert E. Jones
It is my great honor to serve as your commencement speaker. It is very special
to be here when Wheelock College is celebrating its 125th anniversary as a premier
institution of higher education dedicated to the welfare and healthy development of
children and families. You are heirs to the legacy of Lucy Wheelock who in 1888
dared to found this institution, emanating from her fierce commitment to provide the
best education possible for nursery school and kindergarten children. As you know,
Lucy Wheelock was a force in the kindergarten movement, serving as president of the
International Kindergarten Union from 1895 to 1899. She not only made a
commitment to be a fabulous teacher of young children, but to also be a leader that
reminded the nation that a society’s most important responsibility is to provide for
the healthy development, care and protection of children, our most precious resource.
But for Lucy Wheelock, it was more than a social responsibility: it was also a sacred
obligation. After all, she was a very religious person.
You never know where your life’s journey will take you. It is clear that founding a
college was not on Lucy Wheelock’s dance card when she began teaching
kindergarten in 1887 at the Chauncey Hall School in Boston. What she possessed
at that time was a personal mission to advance the field of primary education by
any means necessary. That is where it all starts with your personal mission to
make a big difference in the world. As heirs to Lucy Wheelock’s legacy, we expect
you to go for broke. Let nothing keep you from pursing your vision to make a
better world for children and families. Just remember, Lucy Wheelock was
venturing out to make her mark at a time when women were expected to “stay in
their place” and not dare to lead. It could not have been easy.
It was not easy, but she prevailed. My wife Kathy, who is here today, is a graduate
of Mount Holyoke College, the first women’s college in the United States, which
was founded in 1837 by Mary Lyon, another remarkable woman educator. My
wife never takes for granted what was bequeathed to her by a woman leader – and
neither should you.
As parents of eight children, there was a lot of fretting in our house about the right
colleges for our children to attend. However, the truth is that the decisions that we
made about where to send our children to nursery school was a much more
important decision because nursery school education was probably more
determinative of their success in life. As human service and early childhood
professionals, you know that the developmental period 0 to 5 years is when
children acquire the developmental assets and life skills that send them on a
course to achieve academic success. You know that during this period, healthy
brain development is crucial. A supportive, stable family environment where the
infant receives essential nutrition is a key factor. You know that reading to infants
is necessary for the adequate development of their language skills. You know that
infants’ curiosity about the things in their environment must be enhanced by the
attention paid by those who relate to them. We know listening to music is good for
their development, even in utero, as was recently discovered. Our country is failing
to provide for the healthy development of young children in the ways I have just
mentioned. Consequently, we are wasting the intellectual and human potential of
millions of our children. In Roxbury, where I am now doing some human
development work, we have lots of children who are entering kindergarten not
knowing their colors or numbers. They have never been substantially read to or
had their curiosity nourished. The concept of writing has not been grasped by
them. In short, they are not prepared for success in elementary school. We know
that if they are not proficient in math and reading by third grade, it is not likely
that they will be on a course to graduate from high school. The recent research
conducted by John Hopkins University has confirmed that an elementary school
student will not be on track to graduate from high school if by sixth grade he/she
is not proficient in math and English, doesn’t have very good attendance and has
behavioral problems that have been unaddressed. These are the students in urban
public schools being feed into dropout factories. The good news is that these
students can be saved by substantial educational interventions after sixth grade
and into high school. The Diplomas Now Program being carried out by City Year,
the urban youth corps, and John Hopkins is proving that reversal is possible. But
catch-up work would be unnecessary if we attended to the developmental needs of
children in their early years. Dr. Edward Zigler and Dr. James Comer of Yale
University told us that truth in the 1960’s and their work led to establishment of
the Head Start Program, which was embraced by President Lyndon Johnson.
President Johnson got it, so he made substantial federal funds available for Head
Start. However, only 27% of poor children who could benefit from the program are
able to be served due to inadequate funding. This is a long way from the universal
child care system that Dr. Zigler envisioned. In this Commonwealth, 30,000
children from low-income families are on preschool waiting lists, unable to obtain
the state voucher that would pay for their care. The backlog has nearly doubled
since 2011. Governor Deval Patrick and President Barack Obama get it. Therefore,
they are advocating for massive new funding to expand early childhood education
in this Commonwealth and in the nation. As graduates of Wheelock, you know that
your responsibility is to weigh in with all the advocacy power at your command to
achieve public policy changes in early childhood education. The future of our
country depends on your commitment and action.
On April 28th, the New York Times published an article by Sean Reardon, a
professor of education and sociology at Stanford University, entitled: No Rich Child
Left Behind. It is a blockbuster article. Based on voluminous data gathered over
many decades, Professor Reardon asserts that income is a better predictor of
success in school than race. He says that over the last few decades, differences in
educational success between high and lower-income students have grown
substantially. The rich now outperform the middle class as much as the middle
class outperform the poor. What the rich have is “money that helps their families
provide cognitively stimulating environments for their young children because it
provides more stable home environments, more time for parents to read to their
children, access to higher-quality child care and preschool”, says Reardon. He
concludes his article saying: “Maybe we should take a lesson from the rich and
invest more heavily as a society in our children’s educational opportunities from
the day they are born. That means investing in child care and preschool. These are
not new ideas, but we have to stop talking about how expensive and difficult they
are to implement and just get on with it.”
At a time in this country when we are plagued by partisan gridlock, warped
national priorities and diversionary nonsense, we desperately need you. We need
your intellectual energy, your fierce commitment to children and families and your
voice. We need you to help ramp-up a flagging human development strategy for
the urban poor. The Harlem Children’s Zone in New York City is leading the way by
building a robust pipeline of services for children from birth through college and
into careers. What makes the initiative especially noteworthy is that Wall Street
has invested $80 to $100 million a year since 1991 in this work. It is committed to
doing so for 20 years, which is a generation. The work of the Harlem Children’s
Zone claimed the attention of President Obama and has led his administration to
launching the Promise Neighborhoods Program aimed at replicating the work in
Harlem. However, this program may be starved due the funding cuts caused by
sequestration. We should not allow that to happen. Most encouraging is that
service organizations across the country are moving to adopt the Harlem
Children’s Zone’s service paradigm for their work with urban poor children and
families. Higher Ground, Inc., the service organization I founded two years ago in
Roxbury, has adopted the pipeline operational philosophy as we seek to get better
outcomes for children and young families. Currently, we are seeing negative
indicators for youth in the areas of health, education, employment and early child
development that I saw in the 1960s when I directed the Roxbury Multi-Service
Center. In some cases, the negative indicators are worse now. A great city cannot
be great or whole unless the children and families in its most distressed
neighborhoods are thriving. This is the cause and challenge you are called to
invest your professional lives and civic work in going forward. We need you! We
desperately need you!
In this modern life with its enormous demands, I offer this piece of advice: Fiercely
protect space and time so you can listen to your life. Parker Palmer, who writes
eloquently about leadership and spirituality, made this observation: He says that
we are a very distracted people because of information overload, too much multitasking and too little time for rest and relaxation. Therefore, we do not have
enough time to listen to our lives, so we can know who we are and where we are
going. You should not allow life’s clutter to bury you from yourself. Fight to know
who you are and where you are going.
Wherever you go to work make sure that the organization has a soul. There are too
many soulless organizations, even those which carryout important social missions.
An institution with a soul embraces humanitarian values and commitment to
people that pulsate throughout it. They are palpable. You can feel it. It is a place
where there is fair allocation of resources and fair adjudication of transgressions.
People mistakes are used as an opportunity for learning, not merely for
punishment. It is a place where there is not just compassion for clientele, but also
for employees. There is a heavy investment made in the growth and development
of employees. An institution with a soul does not allow itself to get so weighed
down by the difficult challenges it handles that it is stripped of joy. A joyless
workplace is a drag! Do not stand for it!
Never underestimate what it is possible for you and others to do. When I served as
senior advisor for the Kellogg National Leadership Program where I mentored
extraordinary leaders who were in their mid-careers, I participated with 40 of
them in an Outward Bound Program in Leadville, Colorado. We were required to
climb a 5 story rock wall. I stood at base of the wall while three obese woman
fellows approached it. I thought to myself that there is no way they are going to
climb this wall and that it was cruel to expect them to do so. As they began their
climb with the encouragement and support of their colleagues, their fear turned
into tears, but they journeyed on. When they finally reached the top expressing joy
and triumph, I realized that I had underestimated what they could accomplish. I
had deep self-reappraisal to do. It was a powerful, revealing learning experience.
When I asked these fellows why they did not quit the climb, they said they had a
vision of how triumphant and satisfied they would feel when they got to the top.
Their vision drove them on. Your vision should drive you on. We expect you to be
visionaries who climb your metaphorical rock walls. Go for it!
Due the 9/11 tragedy at the World Trade Center, the killings in Aurora, Colorado,
the massacre of 20 children in Newtown, CT and now the bombings at the
Marathon in Boston, the American people are on edge, gripped by anxiety, fear,
anger and grief. We are in a world of hurt. We need you to use your knowledge and
gifts to contribute to social healing. We need to get to a far better place. I am doing
my part with the Boston Children’s Chorus, which is using the power of singing
for social healing, youth development and community building. Recently, the
Chorus sang at the interfaith service to health our city after the bombings at
the Marathon in Boston. President Obama and Governor Patrick spoke at the
service. The Chorus had a big impact on the audience in Holy Cross Cathedral and
a global television audience. You must now find your way to contribute to healing.
It’s a tall order!
You leave this graduate program in possession of a set of humanitarian and
professional values that you will cherish for rest of your lives. Recently when
speaking to a group of social workers, I articulated a list of social work values that
are also relevant to other human service and educational professionals. Here they
are:

We are committed to working for the welfare of the poor and near poor.
They should not be relegated to the margins of our society.

We are committed to dismantling structural inequality.

We value universal health care that is comprehensive and affordable.

We value an unconditional safety net for our citizens.

We are committed to ensuring excellent schooling as the great equalizer,
playing a powerful role in making a successful life possible.

We value helping persons with disabilities and special needs to effectively
function in the mainstream of schools, groups and communal life.

We value community with robust reciprocal relationships, which makes
everyone feel that they are a part of a social network of caring and
protection.

We abhor easy access to guns and weapons that threaten public safety.

We grave authentic social integration of diverse peoples across the divides
of race, ethnicity, religion, social class and sexual orientation.

We value honest, civil discourse that leads to bonding, not division.

We embrace peace seeking and not war making. This does not mean that we
are absolute pacifists, but we reject being a warrior nation.

We support environmental actions that will heal this weary planet.

We value sharing our enormous resources with people around the globe
who desperately need them.

We value the arts because they elevate the human spirit and fuel optimism.
Without optimism, we would be lost wandering around in the wilderness.
Now is the time to claim those values and project them into the public square.
During the difficult years ahead, we must translate our values into a public voice
and advocacy that moves our country in the right direction. This is our great
challenge and great responsibility. Like Lucy Wheelock, you should go for broke.
Climb your rock wall. Just do it!
Congratulations and best wishes.
Hubie Jones
May 18, 2013