Philosophical Society of Texas, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting: 2009 Page: 18
This book is part of the collection entitled: Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Texas Annual Meetings and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the Philosophical Society of Texas.
Extracted Text
The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
TIlE PHILOsOPHICAL sOCIITY OF TEXAs
The first has to do with this pic-
ture up here which is one of my
. new favorite pictures, Norm Atkins
of Uncommon Schools gave it to
V me two years ago. ihis is the 1924
lour de France, and in case you
can't see well what's going on, one
of the cyclists is lighting the ciga-
rette of another cyclist (figure 1).
I don't need to let that sink in.
Apparently eighty years ago they
Figure 2' thought that smoking, beyond being okay for you. helped athletic perfor-
mance. I've talked to doctors about this to understand what the thinking
was and the theory was that smoking somehow thinned out the blood.
The blood would travel around the body faster, delivering oxygen to the
muscles, sot therefore, when you were training for the most difficult ath-
letic contest in world history, you had to bring along a few extra packs of
Camels.
Talk about a complete 8o-degree mind shift in thinking and beliefs in
the last eighty years, from smoking is not just okay for you, it helps you,
to the way we think about smoking today. Now, too many of our young
kids are starting to smoke again, but they're not doing it because they
think it's going to help them; they just think they're being cool. But if that
mind shift can happen in smoking, why can't that same mind shift happen
in public education?
The framing question I'm going to put to you to start talking about
KIPP is to think about if we could somehow snap a picture in 2009 of the
way we're delivering public education to the masses and we put that pic-
ture up on the wall eighty years from now. I bet they would be chuckling
at that picture as well. I Iere's our chance to think about that and start to
figure out how to do something about it.
My next story, which I always like to begin with as I talk about KIPP,
is about the Masai, a tribe in Africa. They have a great ritual when their
warriors are traveling between their villages: the way they greet each other.
'I lello, good morning," the first warrior to the second warrior, and asks,
"And how are the children?" The second warrior will respond, "All the
children are well." I love that. It's the right focus, the right expectations of
a society. It's the focus on the well-being of the children, the expectation
of the well-being of all the children, and something they've built into the
fabric of what they do fifty times a day: "I lello, how are you doing, andhow are the children; all the children are welll"
If we ask that question here in Texas and in our country, how are our
children, the answer would be some are doing just fine. But the brutal fact
is not nearly enough, and that's what Dave Levin and I discovered when
we became Teach for America Corps members back in 199, placed in
Houston. Houston ISD made me a bilingual 5th grade teacher. Why bilin-
gual I'm 11ot sUIre, but I had a pulse.1 8
Upcoming Pages
Here’s what’s next.
Search Inside
This book can be searched. Note: Results may vary based on the legibility of text within the document.
Matching Search Results
View 65 pages within this book that match your search.Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.
Citing and Sharing
Basic information for referencing this web page. We also provide extended guidance on usage rights, references, copying or embedding.
Reference the current page of this Book.
Philosophical Society of Texas. Philosophical Society of Texas, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting: 2009, book, 2014; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1532735/m1/19/?q=Lamar+University: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Philosophical Society of Texas.