They were six. We were talking about yellow.

It was such a simple lesson.

What is yellow?

Lemon, flowers, the sun

Some colors have emotional weight.

Yellow: cowardly, fear, afraid

Assignment: draw yellow pictures

Sweet George struggled with reading, and his writing was sloppy and hard to read. His drawings were detailed and told stories.

Like it was yesterday, I remember sitting beside him and looking at a lovely picture, an image that is forever sealed in my mind. A woman is sitting on the ground, and a young child is sitting in her lap. They are both looking at me. There wasn’t any yellow in the picture.

“Tell me about your picture.”

“Yellow, you know, afraid. When my dad pointed a gun at us last night, I felt yellow.”

It came out: Dad had lost his job. There wasn’t always enough to eat. Someone had told them that they had to move of their apartment. Dad drank lots of beer. He got his gun and said it would be best if they all just went somewhere else together.

I spent weeks talking to people. I connected George and his family with agencies and support systems that could help them dig out of the very low and scary place where they were living.

When I hear politicians talk about achievement gaps…

When I hear policy-makers say that no child should be left behind……

When I hear motivational challenges like ‘Race to the Top’……

When I hear people say it is a meritocracy and those who work the hardest get rewarded….

When I hear about injecting competition into education because the competitive spirit will motivate everyone to work harder and achieve more……

I think of George and the gun.

I wish those politicians and policy-makers could feel the fear of a first grader deep inside their bones. I wonder if they have ever felt the despair of a hungry, unemployed father who is on the brink of eviction and sees no reason to continue living. If they could, I don’t think they would blame teachers for achievement gaps and low test scores.

If they could, I am confident that their controlling yellow bellies would use their power to do something about poverty, opportunity gaps, and exploitative low wages that benefit business owners and shareholders at the top but do nothing for all the laborers at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder.