By Kay Wicker
Light City Baltimore kicked things off Monday with a day of talks from local leaders and a bright evening of light installations and performances along the Inner Harbor. All week long, Light City will be accompanied by Light City U, a series of conferences aimed at highlighting social, health, sustainability and creative innovation. Light City U isn’t free—unlike the evening street fair. If you didn’t spring for a ticket this year, we’re happy to give you a taste of these important conversations throughout the week.
The enthusiastic Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, president of University of Maryland, Baltimore County, started Tuesday morning’s conference on social innovation at the Columbus Center with “Holding Fast to Dreams: Creating a Climate of Success for All Students,” a talk about his pedagogy. Hrabowski began with an affecting anecdote from his childhood about a time he heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak in church, and convinced his parents to let him join Dr. King in a peaceful protest at age 12. He says that experience taught him that “there’s no time to be a victim.” From there Hrabowski expressed that children can be empowered if given the right tools.
He went on to present the current, and frequently bleak, landscape of education, noting that America has fallen to #12 on the international best educated list, that about half of those enrolling in college do not finish and that there’s been a 50 percent decline in girls taking up computer science since the 80s.
Dr. Hrabwoski bookended his discussion by saying we have to give children love and structure if we want to see them succeed. “Joy comes after the struggle,” he reminded the audience in expressing that we have to urge children to never give up. The more they can envision success for themselves, the more they will find that success.
His final note, before opening it up for questions, was, “Watch your thoughts, Baltimore, because they become your words. Watch your words because they become your actions. Watch your actions because they become your habits. Watch your habits because they become your character. And watch your character because that becomes your destiny.”
