Ian Rowe on what it means to be educated

The merits of FREE and the success sequence

Photo courtesy of the American Enterprise Institute

Ian Rowe has an extensive bio. He's a scholar and educator; he's worked for philanthropists and consultancies, and he has served on a variety of boards of organizations focused on uplifting youth and promoting a common humanity mindset, instead of the increasingly common victimhood mindset. Rowe has co-founded and run charter school networks in New York City, most recently opening Vertex Partnership Academies in the South Bronx. His latest book, Agency: The Four Point Plan (F.R.E.E.) for ALL Children to Overcome the Victimhood Narrative and Discover Their Pathway to Power, spells out his vision for how to empower young people to become prosperous adults, including through education.

Rowe's central message to youth is that they have the power to choose their path in life, and the role of educators is to help young people realize their agency—"the force of one's free will guided by moral discernment." In his view, teachers are charged with helping "a rising generation realize that they have the power to shape their own destiny, even in the face of life's inevitable obstacles. They have the ability to put their own lives in motion, in the direction they seek, if they so choose."

Rowe describes four building blocks of agency: family, religion, education, and entrepreneurship—i.e., FREE.

The family, according to him, is the one young people will form, not the one they are born into. Rowe views the family as "society's first and most vital mediating institution," and although the family can take many forms, he asserts that the married, two-parent household is linked to the most positive outcomes for children and adults. 

Rowe describes religion, or one's personal faith commitment, as a force for good in one's own life and a means to strengthen the family. Even if an individual or family does not have a faith commitment, he argues that the existence and involvement of religious institutions are a benefit to society because religious institutions "have a capacity to speak with moral authority in ways that the government cannot. And two, they can shape social norms to encourage behavior that advances the human condition."

A proper education, according to Rowe, "requires young people to take ownership of their own learning and habits—study, attendance, homework completion, self-discipline—that are the foundation of learning." (More on his views about education below.)

Finally, Rowe calls on young people to cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset about their own lives. The role of educators in this endeavor is to encourage "students to approach their jobs and careers not only as employees but also as prospective employers, as founders—as someone who owns his or her own future." This doesn't mean that young people will necessarily grow into adults who own their businesses, rather the goal is to adopt the mindset of a creator in charge of his or her destiny.

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Rowe advocates for great, tuition-free public education, which is why he has started charter schools. He believes all students should be prepared for the enormous opportunities available, and that a great education helps build personal agency. One aspect of a great education, according to him, is the promotion of character development alongside academic development so that young people are empowered to make "reasoned morally uplifting decisions in their own lives." On the importance of coupling academic and moral education, he follows Martin Luther King, Jr.'s perspective of the purpose of an education: 

"The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals. ... Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of a true education."

Rowe's most recent charter school endeavor, Vertex Partnership Academies, strives to achieve a similar goal. The International Baccalaureate program combines rigor and excellence, while instilling the cardinal virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. The cardinal virtues, according to Rowe, are the "root virtues upon which all other standards of moral excellence depend." They are intrinsic life habits, which should become the norms that are practiced individually to improve collective society. 

Rowe calls for a new age of agency, with five steps to ensure young people receive "a solid foundation in education that enhances their ability to exercise individual freedom and agency." He wants (1) states to eliminate barriers to school choice; (2) schools to teach the success sequence as a probabilities class; (3) K-12 education systems to focus on the distance-to-100 gap; (4) districts and schools to expand content-rich curricula; and (5) higher education institutions to replace race-based affirmative action with class-based preferences.

The success sequence, in Rowe's view, is a means to avoid poverty, and it goes as follows: First, get a high school diploma. Then, get a full-time job. And if one decides to have kids, get married first. 

The goal of teaching this sequence to young people is to help them develop “personal agency over the forces they do control in their education, work, and relationships in order to give them the best shot to overcome the forces they do not control—life's hard knocks, the effects of discrimination, and other forces that might lead to poverty."

Rather than addressing achievement gaps between those of different races, the distance-to-100 gap focuses on closing literacy and numeracy achievement gaps evident across the entire student body. Rowe hones in on literacy as an important area to address, specifically reading to accumulate knowledge. He notes that for decades researchers have "made the case that a lack of focus on building knowledge in early reading instruction has had a devastating impact on all American children." In other words, young people should simultaneously learn to read and read to learn.

In tandem with addressing the general literacy crisis, he advocates addressing the civic literacy crisis. Civic literacy, Rowe asserts, can increase basic literacy—both of which are essential elements of personal agency. He wants schools to bring back history, as well as science and other content, to build the knowledge and vocabulary required to prosper in society.

Combined, teaching FREE and the success sequence, according to Rowe, will help develop young people into agents of their own lives who will grow into prosperous adults.