At the Urban League of Rhode Island's annual corporate luncheon, the Brown University president says society will suffer if low-income students don't get a high-quality education.

11:03 AM EDT on Thursday, April 20, 2006

BY TOM MOONEY
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- Brown University President Ruth Simmons yesterday defined empowerment as the "accumulation of self confidence and fearlessness" that flows naturally from learning. With it, people have created societies and solved the most intractable of problems.

But children today are not being given an equal chance to learn, an equal chance to know that sense of empowerment, Simmons said. The gap between those who learn and those who don't is widening along socioeconomic lines, she said; a fact that threatens everyone.

"My God, that was the reality I grew up in decades ago," Simmons said, speaking to about 300 people at the annual corporate luncheon of the Urban League of Rhode Island, "and we're talking about it again."

Simmons said it is understood "that empowered people will move ahead, will lead, will innovate, will help build and repair society. It is a commodity that everyone wants. Parents want it for their children."

Of course, growing up in the Jim Crow South, Simmons said her parents wanted the opposite for her. It was dangerous then for a black person to be empowered, she said. And so her parents taught her to be deferential and modest. "That was the only way a black person could survive in the South at the time."

"But when I was freed of the constraints of Jim Crow, I was able to claim that empowerment. Schools did that for me. And I know from experience that education can be one of the most dependable pathways to achieving the kind of empowerment that transforms society . . ."

That's why, Simmons said, the news of poor-performing schools should command more attention.

Consider some of the statistics: About only 41 percent of low-income fourth graders in Rhode Island scored at or above a basic understanding in reading proficiency last year, compared with 74 percent of fourth graders from higher income families.

The figure represents more than just poor performing schools, said Simmons. It represents, "the increasingly segregated public schools by race, poverty and educational opportunity."

The fact that figures like these -- the gap between urban and suburban schools, tend not to be news at all to some -- "might be part of the problem."

"We as a nation have become inured to these statistics; statistics about people who are left behind."

"Empowered citizens will not allow this to continue. If our education system is sliding toward separate and unequal outcomes, we can reverse that trend. And the 'we' I have in mind comprises everyone of conscience. We will all pay dearly for our inaction if we produce a generation unable to meet the challenges of this incredibly complex world."

"All of our children, whether they have material advantages or not, will be severely disadvantaged if the doors to achievement, opportunity and empowerment are open only to the fortunate few."

Besides recognizing teachers more for the "noble" jobs they perform, society as a whole should foster wider support for quality education.

"How often do you talk to people who just can't bear the thought that their tax dollars are going to help children across town? It's appalling and we must call it what it is. The notion that we can request the resources in society for the privileged few and leave everybody else behind is a notion that must be called to account. . . . And everybody has the responsibility to do that and to say it is not something a democratic society can abide."

Simmons' words filled the banquet room at The Westin Providence hotel with applause.

tmooney@projo.com / (401) 277-7359

READ the full text of the talk by Brown University President Ruth Simmons, at:

http://projo.com/simmonstalk