Pull Up!

You know what I HATED about my 4th grade gym class...beside the stinky kid who smelled like a a maple bar and turned off any love I ever had for maple for the rest of my life...

I hated doing those stupid pull-up thingys on the monkey-bar. You know, the bar where you had to do 5 chin ups before the end of class. My arms were/are about as scrawny as they come and my gym teacher had to practically hoist me up himself...humiliating.

The point of this story is to talk about raising the bar!

Why is it that so much less is expected of blind people than sighted people?

For example, why is it ok that 90 percent of blind children can't read? I'm talking about Braille people, why do only 10 percent of blind children get to read!?! Would it be ok if 90 of our children in America graduated high school illiterate, not knowing how to read? How is this ok?

Why do we not cringe, scream, yell and throw a fit that 70 percent of blind people are unemployed!?! If we had a 70 percent unemployment rate among sighted people in this country--America would not exist!

Why is it "FABULOUS" for a blind child, who is 12 years old to read 10 word per minute, when their sighted peers read 80 word per minute? It's not FABULOUS at all, it's pathetic!

Why is the bar set so incredibly low for the blind?

I look to the very people who have my job, who have any job in the blindness profession. What kind of damage are we doing to the blind by not giving them the right skills, by not setting high expectations, by not encouraging growth in confidence?

Hoisting us up to the bar, to perform that single chin-up is never gonna build strength. Unless we pull, and struggle, and grit our teeth and sweat a little, that chin up will never happen and we'll never know that we could do it on our own.

WE MUST RAISE THE BAR!

Frankly...I'm tired of the excuses and I think it's incredibly damaging to set such a low standard. This lesson goes for me too, if I don't start pushing myself to excel, if I don't push my students to exceed meager expectations, who will do it?

Grit your teeth and pull, pull, pull...pull up!

Picture Caption: Boy doing a pull up and gritting his teeth.