By now America's accustomed to King of Comedy Bill Cosby turning serious about topics he usually mines humor from. Expressing his celebrity opinions he sometimes touches a nerve, as when he asserted "parenting is not going on" in poor inner city black homes during a 2004 NAACP speech. The Reader got three doses of Cosby opining before his May 6 Omaha concert. In each he revealed different facets of himself. In a phone interview he recalled in his avuncular storyteller way his slacker youth in Philadelphia public housing projects and schools. How it took "a rude awakening" for the high school drop-out to become motivated to learn. A "kickoff" moment convinced him "yes, you can do." His transformation began in the U.S. Navy, where he earned his GED. At Temple University a professor encouraged his talent as a comic writer, reading his work aloud in class to appreciative laughter. "Had it not been for the positive influence of this professor, without him reading that out loud and my hearing the class laugh, who knows, I may be at this age a retired gym teacher, well loved by some of his students." Emboldened, Cosby left school short of graduating to pursue his stand-up career, certain, he says, "I was on track with what I wanted to do." He famously returned to complete his bachelor's degree and to earn his master's and Ed.D in education. He became "a born again, want-to-be-a-teacher." No wonder then he's made education a subject for his advocacy and critique. His strong views don't make him an expert. He doesn't claim to be one. And, to be fair, The Reader asked him to weigh-in on the topic for a second phone interview. He gladly did, too, only this time going off on a rail. Two weeks later in his Orpheum Theater dressing room he addressed child rearing and education with a captive audience of fans, friends and media. When he gets on a roll like this he's equal parts storyteller and lecturer, blustery one moment, nostalgic the next, probing and cajoling, his mischievous inner-child never far away. To some, he's a voice of old school wisdom and tough love. To others, an out-of-touch relic. No matter how you feel about his straight talk, it's clear he's concerned about education. His words carry weight because he's fixed in the collective conscience as America's father from The Cosby Show (1986-1994) and all the family routines he's done in concerts, on albums, et cetera. So when Cosby proclaims, as he did to The Reader, "In education, things are broken," you listen. He believes the brokenness is systemic. "However," he adds, "there are paradigms and they are not secrets. Paradigms meaning they work, they are accessible, you can look at them, and they don't cost super extra money. Because it has been proven that to teach and to make interesting to the students all you need is a good teacher and all that teacher needs is a good principal and all that good principal needs is a good superintendent." "And they can work on a dirt floor, given students who every year come in perhaps disliking school, perhaps ill-mannered, and still get students to learn," he says. "These people who can teach – and I don't mean the ones who win awards, I mean teachers who can teach, who want to teach – are being held back on purpose by rules in the system. Many of these rules have to do with piling on what's in the practicum, in the technical aspects of it, not giving the teacher enough time because there are sayings like, 'If the student fails, then we fail.' "In my eyes and ears there are too many people who don't care and they need to go and the people who can work it need to teach…because this United States of America is being talked about in terms of not being what it used to be and that's an embarrassment." Cosby was just getting started.

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