The Measure of Success

Let me first just start out by saying the Barksdales are amazing people! I would really love to speak about both, but I’m going to focus on Mrs. Barksdale in this one (I think in my next freewriting opportunity I’ll write about Mr. Barksdale since I’ve already started a written reflection on his talk with us).
 
I titled this blog the measure of success because Mrs. Barksdale talk about Connor. Du Bois dedicates an entire chapter of his book The Souls of Black Folk to "the Meaning of Progress." In the chapter Du Bois teaches the children of sharecroppers in the backwoods of Tennessee. He questions what progress would be for these children and these families. Was he really helping them by educating them when they really could use economic not intellectual progress. Since I read that book I've been questioning the meaning of success. Whose meter (or yard) stick do we use to measure it? Is it a formula with a single prescribed outcome? Mrs. Barksdale and Brandon fall right into my line of thought.

Here's my theory: You don't have to go to the best colleges, make the most money, or be the most famous person in the world to be a success. Success is something intangible; it's measured in steps forward.

Connor is not the romanticized poor student born to a crackhead mother and father by DNA alone, who beats the odds to become the best student, graduate for a top college, and goes on to live a lucrative life. Connor's life mimics the reality of the most children born into his situation. Educational advancement of correlates to economic status. Connor never received the early childhood education, consistent teaching excellence, or simply the attention he needed from the school system in Mississippi. Almost without a doubt he would have received these basic rights had he won the genetic lottery and was born to a more affluent family.

However, two people didn't fail Connor. In the fifth grade Connor's teacher assigned Mrs. Barksdale to Connor as a reading coach. Mrs. Barksdale became more than a reading coach to Connor, she became his guardian. It takes someone special to give up a good chunk of their life to help another person's child. It goes completely against everything I studied this past semester in biology class. Then why? Why would she do it? Frankly, I don't know; I didn't ask. I suspect, though, that part of the reason is because it's the right thing to do, and every child deserves a chance.

The other person who didn't fail Connor is himself. Just as there is the cliche story of "success", there's the more common story of the cycle. Connor worked, and continues to work, for what he gets. Every step forward is taken with his own feet and every brick torn down is with his own hands. He holds a steady job, treats others kindly, and works voraciously to stay on track in school. The cycle of immobility is just too common where poverty and ignorance spiral into a quagmire nearly too overwhelming to overcome.

What is the measure of success? In Connor's case it's not becoming one more number, one more statistic, one more person withdrawing from life and depositing nothing into it. There is no standard of success; it's entirely individual. America celebrates rags to riches stories, but they are not that common. Therefore, we can't forget to celebrate the stories of progress, of moving forward, no matter how great or small for those too are measures of success.

-Radical