When Higgins Middle School students board the Choice Bus on Monday, they’ll be confronted with a possible consequence of dropping out of school — a prison cell.
“It’s not a scared straight program,” said Phil Christian, executive director of the Mattie C. Stewart Foundation, which sponsors the bus that travels to schools nationwide. “But we want kids to know it’s important to make good choices.”
On board the Choice Bus, students watch a short video that introduces them to economic reasons to get a degree, and to prisoners who made the wrong choices and are paying for those decisions inside jail cells. After the video, a prison cell replica is revealed to students to show them the harsh reality of not having an education.
“The impact it’s making is very powerful,” Christian said. “They come off the bus and say, ‘Wow, I had no idea that people without an education can end up here,’ or, ‘I didn’t know a prison cell really looks like this.’ It’s a real prison bed, real toilet, real bars. We want to show young people that this is the reality, not what they see on TV.”
As students exit the bus, they receive a pledge card and are asked to make a commitment to finish school and make good choices.
Christian noted that many children across the country have family members in prison, but when family members visit prisoners, they never actually see the inside of a cell.
“We let them go inside and touch everything,” he said.
The Choice Bus and the Mattie C. Stewart Foundation are the products of Shelley Stewart, a successful advertising and marketing CEO and a living example of what an education can do for a person who’s down.
Stewart was born into poverty and witnessed the murder of his mother, for whom the foundation is named. He was abandoned as a young child and suffered severe childhood abuse. But Stewart was lucky enough to pull himself up from the bottom. He taught himself to read and went on to become a powerful radio voice for the African-American community in the civil rights era. He also had an equally successful advertising/marketing career.
Stewart is chairman and CEO of 02 Ideas, a multicultural advertising and public relations firm based in Birmingham, Ala. The Choice Bus is an 02 Idea project aimed at cutting dropout numbers.
The program uses persuasive arguments to make its case, including the statistical reality that 75 percent of prison inmates are school dropouts. And dropouts are eight times more likely to end up in prison, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
“The bus impacts them in different ways,” Christian said of student reactions. “The goal at end of the day, is that they see that people end up in prison because of choices they make. It only takes one bad choice to go from a life of opportunity to a life of despair. If you stay in school and make the most of education, you’re more than likely going to avoid this kind of consequence and instead be rewarded.”
The Choice Bus experience is approximately 20 minutes long and is designed for grades 6-10.
The Choice Bus visit to McComb is a result of a partnership with the Stewart foundation, State Farm Insurance, the Mississippi Department of Education and the McComb School District.
