A Pennsylvania Pastor Leads His Community’s Fight for Educational Freedom
Pastor Joshua Robertson didn’t set out to become a leader in the educational freedom movement, but when his community called, he answered.
It was several calls, in fact. In spring 2020, Robertson’s phone wouldn’t stop ringing. “I was receiving 40–50 calls from parents every single day,” says Robertson, the senior pastor of The Rock Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
These were the early days of the COVID-19 lockdowns. The move to remote learning gave parents a closer look at their children’s schooling—and they didn’t like what they saw.
“All these parents were venting about the school system,” Robertson recalls. “They would say to me, ‘My kid is smart. I can’t understand why they’re not doing well academically.’ Then throw in the violence in our schools. You’re talking about kids who are in fistfights every other day.”Â
Feeling hopeless, the parents turned to a different kind of teacher.
Turning Point
Our education system has significant problems, and Robertson knows it is especially tough on children in under-resourced communities like the one he serves. He had experienced the system’s failures firsthand: Robertson graduated from high school without knowing how to read properly.
Robertson went to college to play football but flunked out his freshman year.
Before failing out, Robertson befriended a bishop while playing organ at a local church. But without school or sports to occupy him, he fell into a dangerous lifestyle, surrounding himself with unsavory characters and illicit behavior. As if he sensed the need to intervene from hundreds of miles away, the bishop called Robertson in the middle of one such indiscretion.
“You’re about to ruin your life, aren’t you?” the bishop asked. He pleaded with Robertson to come to see him. Robertson went, and the bishop enrolled them both in the local community college. The two sat side by side doing schoolwork together.Â
“In less than a week, he saw that I couldn’t read,” Robertson says. “It’s amazing—you can attend twelve years of school, and no one notices that you can’t read. But, because the bishop took the time to sit with me, he saw it right away. And over the next year, he sat with me day after day and taught me to read.”
The man who flunked out of college because he couldn’t read went on to earn both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree.
When the System Fails Children
“I was failed by a system, not just by a teacher,” Robertson explains. “I had a few teachers who cared. But every system has gaps. And I fell into a gap.”
Many educators assumed he had behavioral issues. “I was kicked out of every elementary school I ever went to,” Robertson says. “What people didn’t realize was that my behavior covered up my reading problems. In fifth grade, I got in trouble for hitting a kid in class. I hit him to create a diversion. The teacher was having students read aloud, and I had a feeling she was about to call on me to read.”
This behavior is common among students who are left behind by the system. “They’ll do something mischievous because they’d rather take the disciplinary consequence than be
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