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BE: Capital Preps enrollment consists of predominantly low-income, minority students. How important is being educated and a minority in today’s society?
SP: It’s more important than ever. Never before have we ever needed to learn how to read as much as we do now. My family worked at a aircraft company, they were machinist and they did really well…they were able to buy a house with nothing more than an eight grade education. Today an eight grade education is a virtual promise that you will be poor and in some cases - incarcerated.
BE: Dr. Perry, you are a strong advocate for the education of Americas youth. Has there been a student that even with your education you could not reach?
SP: Yes, plenty. There are still some in our school now, but we do not get a lot of them.
BE: Do you feel that you have created new ways to keep our youth interested in education and their future?
SP: I don’t know if they’re new, but they are effective. I’m not going to say we can take credit for creating them, as much as we have for accepting them. The primary thing that we do differently than a lot of other schools is “it’s about kids, not about grown people.” You will often hear the teachers union or angry teachers talk about their work conditions or the pay…If you come into anything like that, whether it’s journalism, neuroscience, social work with the expectation of making money, then you will never be great. You have to do it because you love it. If you are good at it-you will make money, if not…you won’t. It does not matter what you do, it matters how you do it.
BE: Not every parent of the kids that attend your school are educated. Can you educate them about what you are doing?
SP: If they want to be, but I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about grown people…honestly. I would rather spend time working with the kids. But if they want help, God knows I want to give it to them, in a hurry.
BE: What happened in your life, that you were able to “get out” in-spite of growing up the child of a teen mom, with grand-parents that had little more than a 3rd grade education?
SP: I hate losing, I’m allergic to it. I was very fortunate that I grew up with a lot of losers in my life. Men who were boys. I grew up not respecting them. They would tell us they were coming to get us, take us somewhere or buy us a bike. That got old after awhile. There were people around me who thought because I was black and poor that I was not going to be anything. I was like - really, it’s all over, I’m done. The biggest rage against the machine that I could offer was to do the things [that people I grew up around] said could not be done.
BE: At the end of the day, when all the speeches have been delivered, the school bell rings and it’s time to evaluate your day, what is it that you hope to have accomplished?
SP: I want to change the world…for real, no joke. I feel like I am behind. On a scale from 1 to 10, I am approaching a 3. I believe that I was both blessed and cursed with a certain vision, with a certain perspective. I see things a particular way. When I look at buildings, I look at the architecture of the building and think “Wow, wealthy people used to live here” then I look at the condition of the building and I think “But they don’t live here anymore.” Then I think “Who does live here?” and I know my community does. I feel like that is what God said I was supposed to do, “Correct this.”
BE: Now you have a few books out “Push has come to shove” and “Man Up?” Any plans in the works for more books?
SP: I have one coming out that is going to blow people’s minds. I’m telling you right now. It’s called TransParenting and is probably the realist book I have ever written. It is the book that I have been trying not to write all my life. I was re-reading a chapter of the book and I cried, like it wasn’t something that I wrote.
BE: Can you offer a word of encouragement or share a favorite quote that will perhaps touch a kid who may feel like there is no hope in their future.
SP: My high school yearbook, I just saw it and I said “Those who follow will always be second in life.” I want people to be who they are, do not apologize for the person that you are. There are no boxes that people fit in. The only box that people fit in is a casket and there is no reason for that. By then its too late for everything.