Third World America - Arianna Huffington [84]
In 2004, he launched the Promise Academy, the Children’s Zone’s own charter school. As reported by Metro, “In 2008, 97 percent of its eighth-graders scored at or above grade level, compared to only 46 percent of students in area public schools.”138
Canada summed up his “If not us, who? If not now, when?” approach in a poem he wrote in response to Davis Guggenheim’s documentary on the failure of America’s schools. He titled it “Waiting for Whom?”:139
If you asked me where it all went wrong,
And why we find today
That certain children’s lives are ruined,
Broken dreams just tossed away,
I would tell you a tale so sad to hear
You might not believe it’s true.
It’s true, it’s sad, and terribly bad.
The question is: what will you do?
It seems that it is not a crime,
And not against the law,
To miseducate millions of children
As long as they are poor.
You can fail them year after year,
And no one will give a damn.
That is, no one except you and me,
But we’re quiet and injustice stands.
In fact, adults seem to have the right
To get paid while doing harm.
Even if they have slapped and cursed,
And pinched those little arms.
And some do worse, lest we forget,
Those who punch, demean, molest,
And they get to stay, can’t be sent away.
Who supports this system anyway?
I ask who created this broken system,
Where for decades poor children have failed?
And why can’t we change such dysfunction
Where for most, failed schools lead to jail?
And who in the hell defends such a thing,
Where the evidence is clear and true?
I, for one, have said enough is enough,
I hope I can count on you too.
Our children are waiting for someone,
A hero who’s ready to fight.
To end decades of injustice,
To know and to do what is right.
And what I am saying is shocking,
But what I am saying is true.
The hero children are waiting for,
That hero, it’s me and it’s you.
Susie Buffett offers another shining example of finding your own Calcutta.140 Operating in her own backyard of Omaha, Nebraska, the daughter of Warren Buffett has dedicated her Sherwood Foundation—named after the forest of Robin Hood folklore—to caring for those in need in her hometown. Working out of the same building that has housed her father’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, for more than forty years, Susie Buffett has launched multiple initiatives that have had a profound impact on the community. Among them are: neighborhood redevelopment, after-school programming, financial literacy, and a gang-violence intervention program that brings former gang members back to the street to talk to current gang members. It also works with schools to prevent and address school-based violence and gang recruitment.
Susie Buffett started working in her own community as a young girl. “My mother and I,” she remembers, “were stopped by the police more than once for ‘driving while white’ in the housing projects. I was a Head Start volunteer in the sixties (my mother started Head Start in Omaha in our living room—it was the second site in the country), and I taught sewing in the housing projects when I was in high school.”
Buffett’s foundation is also working closely with Omaha’s public schools: updating book collections and improving online databases at every school library in the district; keeping school libraries open during the summer; providing grants for students in grades seven to nine to enroll in summer school; and making it possible for many math and English teachers to augment their teaching skills at conferences and summer seminars.
The Buffett Early Childhood Fund focuses on ensuring “a more level playing field for all children as they enter kindergarten” with the goal of redefining education in America to encompass