How to Protest Against Betsy DeVos
Our schools are being starved into failure in order to justify mass privatization.
—Timothy Meegan, Chicago Sun Times
A while back, I attended a meeting at the University of Memphis where many of us were against the Relay Graduate School of Education—a reform group that recruits students out of their chosen careers and supplies unqualified alternative teachers to charter schools. Those conducting the meeting, including the university president, were surprised to see such a large audience.
We had planned it that way. Parents, professors, students, and teachers organized and met several Sundays in a row to discuss strategies to keep this group from moving into the university to work side-by-side with the College of Education.
To keep us from speaking at this meeting, the administrators in favor of the program talked and talked and talked.
We finally had to interrupt in order to say why we were there. I am usually polite, and arguably this was not a polite thing to do. Yet, had we not interrupted we would not have been heard.
It is not always easy to protest politely. One wouldn’t be protesting if those in charge were doing what you believe to be right, or if they were listening.
That said, I disliked the barring of Betsy DeVos and the particular part of the protest How to Protest Against Betsy DeVos:
