Category: Nonprofit

Agency: The Four Point Plan (F.R.E.E.) for All Children to Overcome the Victimhood Narrative and Discover Their Pathway to Power
by Ian V. Rowe

Neil Postman posed this question about public schools: “What kind of public does it create?” Ian Rowe addresses that pertinent question, arguing they are doing a disservice both to students and society, and offers a vision for getting back on track.

The author’s background will provide some context. Rowe immigrated to the United States from Jamaica with his parents and brother in 1968. He attended public schools in New York City, then earned an engineering degree from Cornell and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He worked on postsecondary education philanthropy at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and was an executive in charge of public service campaigns for MTV. He then served as CEO of charter elementary schools in the South Bronx for 10 years before cofounding Vertex Partnership Academies charter high schools.

WHAT IS AGENCY? “My short definition is that it is the force of your free will guided by moral discernment. It is the force that closes the delta between… what is and what ought to be. It is the conviction that we are active players in our own story… Agency is learning to see ourselves not as victims of our circumstances, but rather as architects of our own better futures, and to do so even in the face of real obstacles.”

“However—and this is key—no human being acts alone. Agency is individually practiced, yet socially empowered.”