We Must Not Be Defeated (Optimism In May)
62 years after Brown vs. Board of Education, we’re still having a passive-aggressive argument over whether every school-aged child deserves equitable funding for their school. Three-score and two years ago, the legendary Thurgood Marshall led one of the most influential civil rights cases in the nation in BvB, a case whose promise has yet to be delivered in full. Our country has neither the political nor moral will, and most of the arguments sound like “I know there’s a problem, but my kid.” We can’t blame “either side” because on this issue, Americans have reached across the aisle for centuries on engraving inequitable situations. These issues come up almost annually, and, with a renewed focus on racial and social justice, major educational figures from Secretary of Education John King on down have used moments like these to speak to the persistent inequities facing our schools.
In my classroom, I bear a different sort of responsibility to this legacy.
There’s the litigious elements of the work we do: education policy, implemented standards, school funding, and standardized testing, individualized education plans (IEPs), Title 1, and a host of other laws we’ve initialized acronymed. Yet, when our classroom doors shutter, there’s the daily We Must Not Be Defeated (Optimism In May) | The Jose Vilson: