Last week’s speech by Obama on U.S race relations was unprecedented in that it finally asked the American public to acknowledge that it is in fact naïve to ignore issues of race and class because they are still present in the United States.
However, I believe the biggest success of his speech may be that he brought to life one of the biggest casualties of institutional racism – the disparity of today’s education system. During his 37minute speech Obama mentioned ideas relating to the need for equal and better education six times.
During this time he successfully revealed failed education policy established during the civil rights era when he pointed to the current reality of segregated schools,“Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap.”
Obama left no citizen free from the accountability of our failed schools when he said, “It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.”
And continued by arguing that we have a collective responsibility to make schools better,“Not just with words, but with deeds by investing in our schools and our communities… by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations.”
With his speech Obama brought to light an issue that ethnic communities have been fighting for years- education equity. Not nearly as publicized as Obama’s speech is this resurgent movement by students, educators, activists, and communities to elevate the issue of education justice. This is a movement that is on the rise in California.
Groups such as Teachers 4 Social Justice have helped create this movement by organizing teachers and community-based educators in the Bay area for the last eight years. Together this group of teachers meets outside of school hours, tackling issues such as multiculturalism in school, techniques for creating empowering learning environments, and more equitable access to resources in an effort to create caring learning environments for all students.
Just this month conferences, celebrations, and rallies were held to honor “BLOW OUT,” a Chicano student movement that took place in Los Angeles of March of 1968 where thousands of Chicano students, tired of suffering educational injustices, decided to walkout of their classrooms in protest and to demand changes to their educational plight.
A re-enactment of the walkouts took place in East Los Angeles where students gathered to bring attention to the fact that the school dropout rate is higher today than 40 years ago.
Sal Castro a school teacher who helped lead the famous student walkouts in 1968 was present at the re-enactment and told EGP NEWS that the student movement is not over and now, with the CA state budget cuts on the horizon, it is a good time to become active again.
_“The movement is alive and well, I am a great believer in education, education is critical and it’s really criminal what they are doing with the cutbacks,”_ he said.
Castro is right, the movement is alive and growing with new groups like Right To Learn who are organizing as we speak against the proposed budget cuts which will take $4.4 billion dollars from California’s public schools. Right To Learn leaders have called a day of action for FRIDAY, APRIL 18th and predict that 10,000 Students will organize rallies across California. Lucky for us their action will be broadcast online, providing a “virtual demonstration” for all to see.
No comments:
Post a Comment