Education Bill of Rights - James Meredith
James Meredith.
by Valerie Straus. The Answer Sheet. Washington Post
The 80-year-old Meredith was the first black student to graduate from the University of Mississippi. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. placed Meredith first on his own list of heroes in his 1963 Letter From a Birmingham Jail:
“Some day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, courageously and with a majestic sense of purpose facing jeering and hostile mobs and the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer.”
In 1966 Meredith was shot while leading a march that helped open the gates of voter registration to thousands of black citizens in the South. He later earned a law degree at Columbia University. In 2013, he was awarded the Harvard University Graduate School of Education’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the school’s highest honor, and he is the recipient of the 2014 winner of the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence.
Meredith, who now drives his grandchildren to public school in Jackson, Miss., every day said:
“We are losing millions of our children to inferior schools and catastrophically misguided and ineffective so-called education reforms. Our schools are being destroyed by politics, profit, greed and lies,” he adds. “Instead of evidence-based practices, money has become the engine of education policy, and our schools are being hijacked by politicians, non-educators and for-profit operators. Parents, teachers, citizens and community elders must arm ourselves with the best evidence and take back control of our children’s public education before it is too late. We all must work together to improve our public schools, not on the basis of profit or politics, but on the basis of evidence, and on the basis of love for America’s children.”
The Education Bill of Rights identifies 12 basic education rights for every American child, all based on his career as a social activist as well as discussions with thousands of students, parents, teachers and education experts across America. It was written with William Doyle, the co-author of Meredith’s 2012 memoir, “A Mission from God: A Memoir and Challenge for America,” who was recently named to the Fulbright Scholars Program Specialist roster for 2013-2018.
Meredith said that billions of dollars now spent on standardized testing and “so-called education reforms” can be better spent to help children.
“If we do not commit to this course as a national emergency, America is headed for disaster.”
Meredith urges Americans to join a national debate on the American Child’s Education Bill of Rights, and to add their own ideas, on his Facebook page: www.facebook.com/jamesmeredithusa
The American Child’s Education Bill of Rights
Every American public school child has the right to: Choosing Democracy: Education Bill of Rights - James Meredith: