For many years, I've thought about the many miracles and acts of kindness that needed to happen throughout my life for me to be able to navigate from a childhood in poverty to the successful life I have today, where I'm able to give back. Most of those miracles have names: Mrs. Fischer, the first teacher who took any special interest in me and made me believe in myself; "grandpa", the neighbor across the street who tought me to play chess and kept me out of harm's way; Food Stamps; the National School Lunch Program; the National Science Foundation; and other government handouts.
I was on the fringe. Growing up in Independence, MO (yes, hometown of Harry Truman), I wasn't blessed with any physical skills or social charms. If anything, I had to overcompensate with one thing that today's public schools are poorly equipped to support: unusual intelligence. Independence had one program that was able to offer hundreds of children throughout the community with an outlet for their off-the-bell-curve traits: IMPACT (Independence, Missouri Program for Academically and Creatively Talented).
Once per week, selected students would leave their traditional classroom environment and attend a separate IMPACT facility with its own curriculum. Computers, drama, science (with labs! in grade school!), field trips, civics. I loved every Wednesday. For me, school was IMPACT. My only grade school memories of any value all took place on Wednesdays.
The recession of the early 80's hit our family pretty hard, however, and we were relocated to Texas for work. My worst childhood memories are from the 18 months spent in the Texas public education system, where there simply wasn't a home for a misfit like me.
But time heals all wounds, and we found ourselves back in Missouri and enduring a parental divorce. While I know better than to generalize for the total population, in my experience the children growing up in poverty were not focusing on preparing for the SATs or selecting which private college to attend; we helped mom with the house, fed ourselves while she studied for her college exams, endured a parade of better lifestyles on television.
Enter "the socialist agenda." It is because of the food stamps program that my mother was able to keep food in our cupboards. It is because of "welfare" programs that she was able to fight for enough financial aid and scholarships to go back to college for 5 excruciating years to earn her graduate degree. It was because of government-backed student loan programs that she was able to borrow enough money to pay the tuition and enough money to support the household.
Throughout all of this, I was able to do the same and to borrow enough and find enough work-study and tutoring to finish my bachelor's at a private university. My mother and I both graduated from college the same year, with a combined debt of over $120,000. And then we began to work...slowly, painfully, to pay back the government that had given us so much for so many years.
I ask you, Republicans: are we Socialists? I grew up in the Midwest, at the poverty line. I go to church, I believe in God. I own a gun. Despite everything I just described, I think we spend way too much money on our social programs for what we get out of them. But were it not for these programs, my family would not have had the opportunity to evolve our skills to meet the needs of the world. My mother works in pharmaceuticals, my brothers in chemical engineering and Internet tech, and myself in statistics and market research.
Programs like IMPACT ignited my thirst for school. As a child, I felt confused as to why everyone wasn't able to participate. Decades later, I feel blessed to have been saved by teachers like Mrs. Fritchie (my 2nd grade IMPACT teacher) and hope to eventually find a way to give back to the program and share it with a broader community.