Book review of Agency by Ian Rowe

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

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This is a hugely impressive book, which I’ve been eagerly wanting to read. And it surpassed my lofty expectations… Rowe is a proud black man, and a leading educationalist who has a decade of experience delivering schooling in the Bronx (a disadvantaged borough of New York City). His short definition of agency is a “force of your free will guided by moral discernment… Agency is learning to see ourselves not as victims of our circumstance, but rather as architects of our own better futures, and to do so even in the face of real obstacles”.

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“The question is this: What are we going to lead young people to believe they can achieve? Are we going to teach them a narrative of oppression, tyranny, and victimization? Or are we going to provide them with the character and tools to thrive?... The path from poverty to prosperity is not paved with grievance or bitterness but rather with hope and aspiration.”

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“My primary concern, as someone who runs schools, is that both the “blame-the-system” and “blame-the-victim” narratives in tandem supress the countervailing steps young people can take to help them achieve agency and shape their own futures. Without an intervention, more young people may take on a persona of a victimized soul and adopt a mindset of “yes, I can’t” versus “yes, I can.”… Imagine if, instead of the “no matter what, you are disadvantaged” message, young people of all races understood that nothing is predetermined in their lives and that they themselves have the greatest influence over their own futures.”

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This book is part auto-biographical, largely drawn from first-hand experiences in addition to detailed knowledge of teaching. Rowe takes a close look at the connections between poor school performance with single-parent families, births to young mothers, and parents who have poor education themselves:

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“The research is clear and widely accepted: single parenthood among young adults is one of the strongest predictors of child poverty, school suspensions, incarceration, and educational disadvantage. Unmarried young mothers are far more likely to experience high levels of partnership instability and family complexity, and each of these is associated with poorer child well-being and inter-generational transmission of disadvantage… having children while young and unprepared is a far more challenging path, especially when it comes to achieving the best outcomes for children.”

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“Burying our heads in the sand or being silenced into submission would not lift a rising generation when nearly 800,000 babies are born each year to unwed, unprepared, and usually poorly educated young women under the age of twenty-four.”

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“Consider that boys and girls raised in single-parent families are more than four times more likely to be poor than children raised by married parents. Socially and emotionally, girls are 2-5 times more likely to end up pregnant in adolescence and boys are 2-3 times as likely to end up incarcerated before they turn 30 if they grow up in a non-intact family. Children raised in cohabiting families are more than twice as likely to be suspended or expelled from high school compared to adolescents living with married parents. Educationally, children raised in intact homes are more likely to graduate from college, compared to children from non-intact families. Young adults from intact families also earn more money later in life and are more likely to realize the American Dream – to have more family income as adults than they did growing up – compared to their peers from unstable families.”

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Rowe explains how the “Success Sequence” should be taught in schools:

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“The two scholars found that only 2 percent of U.S. adults who graduated from high school, maintained a full-time job (or had a partner who did), and delayed having children until after they were twenty-one and married lived below the poverty line. Roughly 71 percent ended up in the middle class or above.”

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Barack Obama reflected on a teen shooting in Chicago during 2013:

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“When a child opens fire on another child, there’s a hole in that child’s heart that [the] government can’t fill – only the community and parents and teachers and clergy can fill that hole… There’s no more important ingredient for success, nothing that would be more important for us reducing violence than strong, stable families – which means we should do more to promote marriage and encourage fatherhood.“

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Rowe reflects on the social advocates who dismiss the importance of marriage, but make very different decisions in their own lives:

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“It’s also worth noting the hypocrisy of Coates and so many others who criticize a focus on marriage and fatherhood when it comes to the lives of others while they practice, or even celebrate, the importance of marriage and fatherhood in their own lives.”

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He strongly pushes back against identity politics and prevailing narratives:

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“If you tell young people the system is irremediably rigged against them – pound it into them that they are victims of “systemic racism” or large economic forces and that they have no opportunity and there is nothing they can do to make a difference – then do not be surprised if they act, or fail to act, accordingly.”

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“Unlike today’s harbingers of doom, the “victim mongers,” who stress the futility of individual action in the face of systemic forces, we need to offer an empowering, evidence-based alternative centred on agency. Our kids need to know that, as the quote oft attributed to renowned psychoanalyst Carl Jung says, “I am not what happened to me; I am what I choose to become.”

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Chapter 5 tackles modern issues of diversity and inclusion, and is titled “How the Hard Bigotry of “Antiracist” Expectations and the Pursuit of “Equity” Erode Agency for All”:

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“In the name of equity, now none of the 106,000 San Diego students are required to hand in their homework on time. And teachers are now prohibited from factoring in a student’s classroom behavior when formulating an academic grade… But rather than confronting all the factors that drive the development (or not) of flourishing human beings, “antiracist” and “racial equity” policies incorporate the soft bigotry of low expectations. They are soul-killing and skill-killing for all students, and especially our nation’s economically disadvantaged students.”

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Rowe is especially critical of the prior attempts to close achievement gaps:

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“These numbers highlight our massive national failure to effectively teach literacy and build verbal proficiency across all races. They also shatter the false assumption that racism is the sole, or even the primary, cause of low proficiency rates among black and Hispanic Americans. “Systemic racism” can hardly be the cause of such poor performance among thousands of white students (Figure 15.2). In my view, however, our multidecade obsession with closing achievement gaps has done something even worse. It encourages monocausal thinking, which keeps us from identifying solutions across categories.”

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I can strongly recommend this book to anyone who is passionate about positive social change, education, and families. It has shaped my thinking, and is hugely inspirational.