Why we can’t wait
Something happened on the way to educational equity in our country. Somehow a movement for real change that should have nearly universal appeal has become fractured and divided. For the life of me, I can’t fully understand why. I mean, in many ways I understand the political and cultural roots of our divide, but it seems like we’re making this more complicated than it has to be. When did we lose sight of our promised land in education, and could it be that we’ve never really shared a united vision in the first place? Where’s our collective sense of urgency?
Last night I joined a powerful group of parents who were simply advocating for the rights of their kids to have an excellent education. They’ve done their research and their homework, and they were vocalizing their support for a policy that they believed if implemented appropriately with their partnership, could lead to transformative change for their students. What’s most important is that this movement doesn’t look like most “movements” we see today in education. It’s a movement by parents, for parents, and specifically our most vulnerable parents, i.e the ones typically disenfranchised from the public education system to begin with. It has been the joy of my life to see people who once assumed they were powerless start to discover their real power, and demand a seat at the table.
Yet, this isn’t the news getting covered. Look across our country right now and you’ll see teachers striking and unions leading the conversation about what needs to happen next in education. As an educator and a parent of students in public schools, I understand the duality of roles. On the one hand, educators have for years been the scapegoats of everything that’s wrong in public education, so much so that we’ve created a wounded animal. On the other hand, anytime you pit the needs of adults against the needs of kids in a zero sum game, adults will lose every time (and twice on Sundays).
Another smaller, but equally disturbing trend that I’m noticing is the real fear that exists on the part of multiple participants. There’s the old guard who staunchly defend the status quo as if doing nothing will solve any problems. I guess they are afraid of change, and perhaps what change might mean for them. There are the weak willed political leaders who are too timid to operate with a sense of urgency when real change is necessary (one board member last night actually requested to table a vote in order to “take the heat off” as opposed to actually having the guts to do the right thing). Then, there are those who sit on the sidelines, afraid to get involved in the first place.
In the words of the Lorax, a classic tale by Dr. Seuss:
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.
What are we so afraid of? Getting it wrong? Too late for that. We’ve already been failing students for too long, particularly our most vulnerable populations. But now we have a real chance to make a difference. Last night I sat disgusted as I heard too many arguments pleading for our board to wait. Thank God we heard some passionate rebuttals from the other side of the aisle, but the damage was done.
Wait for what? Only those with the privilege, time, and resources can afford to wait. For everyone else, our educational crisis is an emergency and needs to be met with an appropriate sense of urgency. Across this country for the first time we’re seeing the seeds of movements led for parents, and by parents like the Memphis Lift, and the Oakland Reach and even in Nashville and Atlanta beginning to see parents organize and inject their sense of urgency into their local movements for change.
Dr. King wrote it best when he said:
For years now, I have heard the word ‘Wait!’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’ We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.
SDW3
