Dr. Perry challenges St. Louis students to be change agents
On February 19, Dr. Steve Perry, an educational innovator in diversity, sent a message to 300 students from across the region, at Ritenour High School. His message empowers the youth of the St. Louis region into addressing segregation issues that had come to light in the last year. Perry spoke of being change agents, because no one else will do it for you.
Born on his mother’s 16th birthday, a hard situation in Dr. Perry’s earlier years, helped him to strive to do better, despite the people who claimed he could not. His path over the years led to him holding a PhD in teaching, becoming a published author, and opening several schools in urban areas with a graduation rate of 100%.
Dr. Perry helped students to understand the systemic barriers set in place in order to hinder, detour, and eliminate people that aren’t seen as “fit enough” to continue a specific path they are pursuing. The goal is to weave out the poor, the uneducated, the weak minded to keep the ratio at a level people would rather see. Ratios that keep the people on top to stay on top and those at the bottom to stay at the bottom.
Systemically barriers are set in place in order to hinder, detour, and eliminate people that aren’t seen as fit enough to continue a specific path they are pursuing.
— Dr. Steve Perry
“Being able to prove the ones who tell you, that you can not do it is more than just that. By doing more and achieving everything you’ve set out to do is challenging the system set on making you fail,” said Perry.
Dr. Perry says things can be done without developing the thought that you would have to conform. “As long as you’re true to yourself, you don’t have to worry about what they call you. What people call you is not what you are.” Dr. Perry said. He believes that we as a people can change the world. More importantly, we can change this system.
Change is just that, the will to make things different. Dr. Perry speech to students stated that the only thing that makes change hard is people sitting and waiting for change, but wont be apart of making the solution possible.
“The truth is that most meaningful changes have come from young people. The civil rights movement that we often refer to was led by young people. Dr. Martin Luther King was 25 years old, when he did the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Much of the soldiers he had with him were kids.” Dr. Perry stated.
Statistics from Dr. Perry sited that minorities and poor students are below their fellow Caucasian economically stable counter parts on academic scales. He believes this is due to the circumstances in which the student was born into, not the lack of brain power that student has. A student can be very smart but will not show it within the confines of a limiting classroom.
Dr. Perry opinion is that many students are left in a failing school. A failing school, for example, has teachers who do not care whether the students try or not. The schools has low testing scores and its district is doing nothing different.
“Not because of what they produce. But how they are produced.” Dr. Perry said. This means that its the environment that they have been giving and chanced to be born in. This is the literal definition for you are a product of your environment.
Dr. Perry believes that changing a persons education can change a whole community, the United States, and the World. Minorities has to be wanting to be educated, and demand a better education.
He asked the students to get up and make the change that will make for a better tomorrow.
“Nothing stays the same forever when people crave the difference”
