Staff photo by Jenna Walker/Chattanooga Times Free Press – Feb 15, 2011 — Geoffrey Canada, the president and CEO of Harlem’s Children’s Zone, speaks to an audience including Girl’s Inc., Tuesday afternoon at Hardy Elementary in Chattanooga, Tenn. Canada urged Chattanooga residents to provide a better education for their children.If education can turn around the poorest neighborhoods in Harlem, there’s no reason it can’t do the same in Chattanooga.
That was the no-nonsense brand of education reform that social activist Geoffrey Canada, president and CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone, brought here Tuesday.
“If we don’t fix [education], we’re not going to continue being a superpower,” Canada told those present at his lecture Tuesday evening at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. “Over the past five years, I’ve met several presidents, several secretaries of education … and there is no plan. If you want to save your children, you’re going to have to do it yourself. It’s just us.”
Prior to his speech as part of the George T. Hunter Lecture Series, Canada first spent an hour in the gymnasium at Hardy Elementary School, participating in a question-and-answer session packed full of parents, teachers and community members.
Canada, who is featured prominently in the recent documentary “Waiting for Superman,” told the audience at Hardy that the issue of poor education outcomes in certain communities isn’t unique to Chattanooga.