COMMENTARY
Rod Watson: Dads step up to show value of education
When you throw in the overtime, 38-year-old Ricky Riley works practically seven days a week as a mechanic’s apprentice at General Mills.
But that’s not his most important job.
Job One is reading to his young daughters, teaching them the alphabet and now — starting Wednesday — escorting them to school to underscore the importance of education and the pivotal role men play in their children’s lives.
Riley will be among dozens of Buffalo fathers — and grandfathers, uncles and other males — taking kids to school on opening day as part of the Million Father March, a nationwide effort organized by Chicago’s Black Star Project.
The nonprofit group was founded in 1996 to improve life in black and Latino communities by erasing the achievement gap, and its Web site says it all:
“Schools, by themselves, do not educate children. . . . just as important is what happens in the home and the community . . . Active and involved parents, families, communities are necessary to educate children.”
Riley seems to know that already. With 3-year-old Megan on his lap in the family’s attractive North Buffalo home, he has seen the impact he can have.
“The other day, I was teaching her some letters. . . . She gets excited when I get excited that she’s learning,” Riley said.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of that. For all of the significance of the history Barack Obama will make in Denver tonight, what happens Wednesday and in the days thereafter will have a much more direct impact on the lives of minority kids.
The statistics on the absence of minority fathers from their children’s lives are as well known as the statistics on the achievement gaps that those kids face. The relationship between the two sets of damning data is more than coincidental.
It’s why the Buffalo Local Action Committee and other pro-education groups are pushing to get more fathers involved. Riley heard about the march from his wife, who’s related to one of the organizers. He decided that it was the kind of effort he wanted to be part of, so he will escort Megan to the Holy Cross Head Start program and 6-year-old Morgan to kindergarten at Campus West.
He knows that the enthusiasm they feel when he reads with them will be palpable when they “tell all their friends that this is their dad. So that’s exciting, too.”
It’s the kind of role modeling that teaches both boys and girls what to expect of men.
“They’ll know that they can rely on their dad. Not just me, but him, as well,” said Riley’s wife, Kimberly.
But the potential impact of the Million Father March on kids is only half the story; the other half is the impact on schools, which typically don’t see dads.
“So if they do see the father, they must know that he really does have an interest,” Riley said.
And don’t believe that interest doesn’t matter. The educational bureaucracy is just like any other bureaucracy: It responds to the people it hears from.
If fathers disappear, there’s a good chance their kids will disappear into the educational abyss. Conversely, make yourself known to teachers and the principal, and your kids — no matter how crowded the classroom — will get attention, too.
That’s just the way it works, and parents — especially black and Hispanic parents — need to realize that.
That’s not to let well-paid educators off the hook. It’s just to say that it’s naive to expect that a stranger will care more about your kids than you do.
That’s why Riley and dozens of other fathers will be marching to school Wednesday. And if we really want to turn schools around, hundreds of other fathers will be joining them.
