Seattle Public Schools (SPS) is once again at a crossroads. The issues affecting our education system are a mirror of those affecting our neighborhoods, our city, and society as a whole. It is a time of great potential, but also great danger. A time of increasing inequality: growing wealth for a small minority and an increasingly precarious existence for many. To decrease this kind of inequality, SPS faces crucial decisions about equity, integration, and differentiated learning that meets the needs of each student. These educational decisions cannot be separated from the issues facing the community in general.
There is a growing pandemic of indifference to the suffering of individuals and vulnerable groups of people in our society, yet we mustn’t allow it to overwhelm us and prevent us from taking action to ease the suffering of others.
“In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.” —Wangari Maathai
A youth-focused reaction to Fred Hampton’s 1969 speech.
by Michael Dixon and Mark Epstein
Our youth today are in an extremely fragile state. There is no movement they can look to be a part of that is guiding them to a better place. Whether we are a member of a group based on ethnicity, religion, gender, or gender preference, we are vulnerable to attack. The greatest threat to oppressive power today is that people will get out of their individual identity issues and unite. This is particularly troubling since the power of a people depends on the vision and power of its youth.
Almost 60 years ago, in the middle of two decades of civil rights activism that changed our country, James Baldwin delivered a speech to teachers, in which he declared that the purpose of education is for students to look critically at their society and to have a vision of change they are willing to fight for. Without such a perspective, he says, we will perish, or follow the worst example of a Nazi youth movement.
