{"id":5676,"date":"2016-11-01T14:16:32","date_gmt":"2016-11-01T18:16:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/?p=5676"},"modified":"2020-08-07T16:44:08","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T20:44:08","slug":"dont-talk-about-it-do-something","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/2016\/11\/01\/dont-talk-about-it-do-something\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Talk About It \u2014 Do Something!"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/a>School choice crusader Steve Perry challenges students to be agents of change \u2014 ‘You can\u2019t hashtag your way through a social movement’<\/em><\/h2>\n

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Long before he was standing in front of crowds as a school choice crusader, Steve Perry used to sit alone in his room, listening to the taped speeches of Martin Luther King Jr.<\/p>\n

He says it wasn\u2019t just King\u2019s eloquence that inspired him; it was his courage and, more importantly, his actions.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a man who spoke what the country needed to hear even when the country did not want to hear it \u2014 ultimately to his own peril,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve learned a lot not just from what he did on the public side but from the cost. Freedom ain\u2019t free, and the pursuit of it is even more expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perry is the founder and former principal of Capital Preparatory Magnet School in Hartford, Connecticut \u2014 a school that has become nationally known for sending 100 percent of its predominantly minority and poor graduates to college. He was the featured speaker at the 2016 Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration at Georgia Southern earlier this year, and his message to the audience, most of them students and young people, was simple: \u201cIf you ain\u2019t doing something, you ain\u2019t doing nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI see people with their fists up, the latest t-shirt that says #BlackLivesMatter, but if black lives matter so much, what are you doing to make something happen,\u201d he asked. \u201cYou can\u2019t hashtag your way through a social movement. Are you doing something or are you talking about it? If you\u2019re talking about it, you\u2019re not doing anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"perry1\"<\/a>For Perry, \u201cdoing something\u201d has meant taking a passionate stance on education in America. He travels around the country espousing his belief that schools should be accountable for their ability to educate children, and in the past has said that failing schools should be closed. These beliefs have put him at odds with teachers\u2019 unions and educational organizations, and even put him at odds with the NAACP, which he said is in danger of \u201cbecoming a relic\u201d because of its stance with the educational status quo.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to make sure you keep people afraid and dumb, locked up in their own ignorance, what you do is you force them into failed schools,\u201d he said. \u201cYou call it a school when nobody in there is learning and then blame everybody in there for not learning.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was King\u2019s views on education that led Perry on his path. In King\u2019s final book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?<\/em>, he said that if you pulled minority children out of poor-performing schools and gave them access to a quality education, you could change the trajectory of their lives. Capital Prep was founded on that belief, and Perry described the power of watching students learn despite their circumstances.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want you to see what happens when pride starts to set inside somebody when they see the hope coming through,\u201d he said. \u201cI want you to see that because then you can see why it\u2019s so important for you to do something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perry described the dire situation of education in America, and noted that in Georgia, normed assessment statistics showed that less than half of students were performing on grade level in reading and mathematics. Nationwide, 75 percent of students taking the ACT were deemed \u201cnot college ready,\u201d and minority and poor children are still attending some of the worst schools in the country. It\u2019s a picture he believes should rouse students to action.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I say, \u2018if you ain\u2019t doing something you ain\u2019t doing nothing,\u2019 what I\u2019m saying is \u2018if you\u2019re not working hard to transform the circumstances that have created challenges for you and others then you, in fact, are contributing to their continuation,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Doing something isn\u2019t just a challenge, however. Perry said it\u2019s an obligation, and students have to choose how they\u2019re going to live with that fact.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way that we live in this life is one of two ways: we either make a life or we make a living,\u201d he said. \u201cMaking a life is paying a debt. Making a living is just paying your bills.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want you to recognize that you\u2019ve been put here for a purpose that\u2019s bigger than grades.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 Doy Cave<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

School choice crusader Steve Perry challenges students to be agents of change \u2014 ‘You can\u2019t hashtag your way through a social movement’     Long before he was standing in front of crowds as a school choice crusader, Steve Perry used to sit alone in his room, listening to the taped speeches of Martin Luther […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":5677,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[53],"class_list":["post-5676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","tag-spring-2016"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}