the REAL Pursuit of Happiness

There is a non-profit program offering academic enrichment, martial arts, media production classes, mentoring, exposure to renowned writers such as Rudyard Kipling, and field trips to places like Washington. All this is made possible to enable young children from the Mississippi Delta to dream beyond the borders of their small and empoverished existence. It began as Freedom Summer 1964 when college kids descended on Mississippi to teach black children in so-called freedom schools and help register their parents to vote. In a nutshell, it is a program that offers to children an opportunity to see something much bigger than life in the Delta.

There are currently 42 kids enrolled in the program. According to writer Leonard Pitts, Jr., the families of these kids are asked to pay $300 per year. The program is funded with this money as well as grants from donors such as the Kellogg Foundation. According to Mr. Pitts, these enrolled students (from middle school and up) “see their reading scores improve by a grade level and overall grades rise by 15 percent. These same children who stick with the program and make it to that sixth year have so far had 100 percent college enrollment and high school graduation rates."

These are awesome numbers, but notice that there seems to be something missing. Mr. Pitts mentions no government assistance or interference. Couple this with such schools as Harvard and Stanford waiving tuition fees for enrolling students who qualify both financially and academically, and we have a formula for success for young people who had previously never thought it possible to be a “laser tech”, as one student aspires to be, and attend such high-end schools as MIT or Harvard.

There is more about this project that I don’t know, but this I do know: it is the essence of the United States and the American Dream that these young people have every reason to hope for and dream of. I think we have mistakenly thought of The American Dream as restricted only to a notion of working in fields of endeavor we had never thought possible or attending college or finally buying our own home. The true essence of all that is good is found in the young people who volunteer their time and talents to make such dreams possible and the students who make the most of it.

We have mistakenly believed the American Dream to be defined and summarized by owning our own homes, but I think it goes much deeper than material possessions. When we are free to pursue anything, especially that which extends beyond self, and be completely free from government intervention, we embody all that this nation holds dear to its heart, and the “pursuit of happiness” takes on a whole new meaning.

The Freedom Project was founded in 1998 by Chris Myers Asch and Shawn Raymond, alumni of Teach for America, which recruits recent college graduates to teach in urban and rural schools, and by Charles McLaurin, an organizer of the original Freedom Summer. How much more amazing can the American Dream actually be when we come to realize the profound impact such unselfish dreams can have on dreams yet to be realized? And all without a government that more and more seeks to be all things to all people.

Thank you, Mr. Pitts, for bringing this to our attention. It is refreshing to read of such things within an election season in which politicians “promise” the same things but never seem to deliver.