Yohuru Williams asks – What Would Dr. King Say About the Corporate Assault on Public Education?
Dr. Yohuru Williams is one of my heroes, as well as a fellow education blogger and activist. Dr. Williams is also a professor of history and a dean at Fairfield University in Connecticut.
This wise and powerful commentary piece first appeared in the Progressive on January 16, 2015. It has since been reposted on many blogs.
What Would Martin Say? (By Dr. Yohuru Williams)
This year marked the fiftieth anniversary of Mississippi Freedom Summer and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, one of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation in US history. It also has marked a renewed push by the proponents of corporate education reform to dismantle public education in what they persist in referring to as the great “civil rights issue of our time.” The leaders of this effort, including US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, are fond of appropriating the language of the civil rights movement to justify their anti-union, anti-teacher, pro-testing privatization agenda. But they are not social justice advocates. And Arne Duncan is no Reverend King.In a 2010 speech observing the forty-fifth anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery March, Duncan boldly invoked the words of John Kennedy: “Simple justice requires that public funds . . . not be spent in any fashion which encourages, subsidizes, or results in racial discrimination.” Duncan enjoined those in attendance, “Let me repeat that, President Kennedy said that no taxpayer dollars should be spent if they subsidize or result in racial discrimination.” Yet Duncan and the Obama Administration—through Race to the Top, a program similar to the Bush Administration’s No Child Left BehindYohuru Williams asks - What Would Dr. King Say About the Corporate Assault on Public Education? - Wait What?:
Dr. Yohuru R. Williams http://bit.ly/1SZahsk
