While pursuing his master’s degree at Harvard, Adam Howard ’93 found himself at an elite boys’ school outside Boston. For the previous two months, he had been researching the concept of privilege. Though Howard had a bit of a southern accent, the headmaster had been very accommodating on account of him being a Harvard man. But when he discovered Howard had gone to high school in Bardstown, Ky., everything changed.
He had assumed that if I had gone to Harvard, that I must have gone to an elite high school as well,” Howard recounted. “And this man who had been nice to me for two months turned suspicious immediately. No one would talk to me afterward and, essentially, that ended my research.”
If the headmaster had known Howard’s whole story, he may have been more impressed.
Howard spent much of his childhood in Kentucky basements. After moving from Owenton to Somerset to Bardstown, at 6 years old, he lived in the basement of a church. His father was an itinerant Pentecostal preacher with recurring health problems, and the family had fallen on hard times. When Adam entered the first grade, school administrators shuffled him off to another basement in the school, this one where special ed classes were held.
“They saw this poor kid coming to school who had a speech impediment, and they put me in special ed,” he said. “Once you’re in special ed, it’s very difficult to get out of it because you’re on that track. You just stay there.”
It wasn’t until middle school that a teacher saw something in him others had not. Howard had been labeled unable to learn, but this teacher called a meeting with his parents to tell them he was going to get Adam up to speed.
“He changed my life,” Howard said. “He knew I had been labeled unable to learn because I was from poverty.”
Over the next few years, Howard worked hard to catch up and to be more social. He participated in sports, football and basketball. He figured that, unlike his sister, college was not an option for him, so he planned to join the military. The Army seemed like a good way to escape his impoverished situation.
“I was just learning how to read in the seventh grade,” he said. “I didn’t feel like college was an option, but I was pretty determined to get out of poverty. The military was always seen as a secure option.”
In high school, though, it was another teacher who changed Howard’s life again. She taught business, classes like typing and accounting. Though he wasn’t especially interested in those topics, he was interested in her mentorship and in being a part of the Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) club, which she had encouraged him to join. By his senior year, Howard became the FBLA president. And when the time came, she suggested Berea College and wrote him a recommendation letter.
“I got a horrible ACT score,” Howard related. “Brenda gave me a good recommendation. I was working, putting in the effort. Even though I didn’t have the academic skills, I had a lot of other skills, the attitude, the disposition, the leadership potential if someone just gave me the opportunity to do it.”
When he was accepted, Howard joined the Army Reserves and enrolled at Berea. He didn’t have much beyond a good story and the potential for an even better one. At Berea, it was more of the same, struggle but eventual success. He nearly dropped out his first year, but sophomore year, he discovered Chaucer, and that was enough to keep him going as he majored in English education.
My husband Omar and I are leaving everything to Berea College. Going to Berea was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life.
Adam Howard ’93
Howard had tamed his speech impediment and had studied the mythical “Standard American Accent” broadcasters use to tone down the twang in his cadence.
The summer between his fourth year and his student-teaching year, Howard participated in an educational outreach program. There, he met an alumnus of the graduate education program at Harvard, who recommended he consider applying to the program since, as an Appalachian, he would be considered a kind of minority.
“At the time,” he remembered, “I didn’t fully even know about Harvard. I kind of knew it from the movies but I didn’t understand the significance. My education professors got me up to speed about that. So, I went straight from Berea College to Harvard Graduate School of Education.”
Harvard was most certainly a new situation for Howard. He had grown up in rural Kentucky, had gone to public school and to college with people he could relate to because they had grown up in the same disadvantaged world he had.
“At Harvard, I saw incredible privilege that I had never quite seen before. No one was like me. No one was from Kentucky or Appalachia. There were not too many people from low-income backgrounds, so I became very interested in trying to understand all these privileges and advantages that everyone had. That’s why I became a professor and why, for 27 years, I’ve been studying rich people.”
Recently, the Charles A. Dana Professor of Education and chair of Education at Colby College joined the Berea College Alumni Executive Council and spoke to a group of young men in Berea’s Appalachian Male Initiative to learn about their experiences. These days, Professor Howard is transitioning to a study of male privilege in general, which is the topic of his forthcoming book.
This will be the fifth book by a once illiterate special education kid stuck in the basement.
“My husband Omar and I are leaving everything to Berea College,” Howard said. “Going to Berea was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life.”
