An Education for All: My Story
22 years ago from last fall i was going into my senior year at wichita state university as a full scholarship student. this should have been a good thing, but there was a ‘small’ hitch because at that time WSU only gave three year scholarships. overall it shouldn’t have been much of a problem because i thought i had worked it out with my parents.
you see they weren’t too excited about me going to music school (my father’s reaction was “you can major in music?”) so they refused to pay for school. of course this pretty severely limited my choices for college, but I practiced quite hard and probably surprised them when I got a full ride (room/tuiton/books) scholarship to WSU. all in all they weren’t so happy with my continued insistence to attend music school but we did come to a deal in which as long as i made my grades and they will pay for my senior year.
of course things didn’t go quite as planned. the summer before my senior year I’m on the road all summer performing with the Madison Scouts Drum and Bugle Corps and didn’t have much contact with my parents. when i got back to school i found out not only did father run off with his bosses secretary, but he also locked my mom out of all the bank accounts. not only there was no money for school, there was no money at all.
so to make a long story short, there was no way for me to continue school at WSU ($9,000 a year in 1989 dollars), so i pretty quickly made some connections and in fall 1989 i moved out california to start over. by 1995 i had established residency, worked as a fulltime musician at disneyland, finally finished my degree at CSUF and began teaching at Marshall High in LAUSD. since then i added a masters in composition (at CSUF) and now teach in the same system that made it possible for me to pull myself up with very little support.
unfortunately the very educational system that has given me a 2nd chance is quickly disappearing and we are losing what has made california one of the few states that had a higher education master plan that stressed AN EDUCATION FOR ALL.
of course this is only one story, but over the last 15 years i could always point out out that no matter how bad things got, a college education was one of the best and realistic solutions. right now is the time to start doing something about this and hopefully the marches today are only the beginning.
