“The value of an education has no price. It?s sad when a person doesn?t know how valuable it is,” said Genevia Jackson, a 73-year-old Baltimore grandmother, who hopes to obtain her General Equivalency Degree this fall.
Born in the deep South in the middle of the Great Depression, Jackson did not attend school until she reached 10 ? and then only from January to March, so that she could help her sharecropper mother in the fields. She estimates that she received no more than nine months of formal education as a child.
But the passing years and multiple hardships of her life never dimmed her desire to learn.
Jackson estimates that she was about 34 when she started to read and write. “I was deeply illiterate. I knew my ABCs, but not what they meant. I had to dodge so people didn?t know I couldn?t read. I had intelligence. It would have been easier if I could have cultivated it. It?s a lonely, lonely road without book understanding.”
Along the way, she helped put her husband, Russell, through college, and saw all six of her children graduate from high school. Working to support them meant sacrificing her own dream ? teaching home economics.
But she never gave up her quest to learn.
“If I got my GED today and died tomorrow, I would be happy,” she said.
And she doesn?t care how long it takes. “I do some schoolwork every day. I read the Bible every day. When I was little, I used to sit at night by my grandmother?s side, and listen to her read the Bible. That is what prompted me to want to read. You have to stay in some type of reading every day, I know this to be a fact.”
Thousands of children and young adults across the city and state have now begun a new school year.
Many of them will grumble, some will cut classes, some opt to drop out altogether.
Bad choices lead to bad options, which sometimes reverberate through generations. It?s hard to believe that in 21st century Baltimore City there is still a sizable adult population who either cannot read, or can only read at a low proficiency level. Baltimore Reads, a group that promotes literacy, reported in 2002 that 38 percent of adults in Baltimore City ? twice the state rate ? can?t read. That means thousands of adults can not understand the front page of a newspaper or fill out a job application.
It also means thousands will never experience the joy of staying up all night with a book you just can?t put down and stretch their imaginations with characters and ideas different from those in their daily lives.
With the high school dropout rate close to 50 percent, improving those statistics will be difficult.
That means as a community we need to hold up positive role models such as Jackson, who put a premium on learning.
Children must know education is the best path to achieve a self-sufficient and fulfilling life. In the uncertain world of Baltimore, where children move homes regularly and grow up without parents, it is the one thing that can never be taken away.
Brooke Gunning is the author of several regional best-sellers, including “Maryland Thoroughbred Racing,” “Baltimore?s Halcyon Days” and “Towson and the Villages of Ruxton and Lutherville.” She currently is at work on her next book.
