A group of Chicago ministers are seeking to bring the inequalities in school funding to light. Their method is to ask students to boycott the first day of school to bring attention to this issue.
Many of these ministers are men that I have met and have a great deal of respect for. But I have serious questions about this method of bringing the issue to the forefront.
I do agree with them that education is still quite separate and unequal in this country. I do agree that children in our neighborhood are served with substandard schools while other communities have a shopping mall of learning opportunities in their schools.
My concern is more to do with why ask children to not go to school to highlight the importance of school. Especially since funding is largely based on attendance. These schools will receive less in funding because of these students not showing up. Some of these same pastors led campaigns last year going door to door to ask parents to have their children at school on the first day in order to help increase funding. The messages seem mixed to me.
Do you agree that education is still unequal in our country?
Do you think having kids protest school is a good way to make a statement about this issue?
What can be done to help bring equality in this area?
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1 comment:
Hey Kevin. I definitely think inequality in education is a huge problem. I am basically clueless about how to deal with it, but I agree with you that telling kids to stay home is probably not the most productive method of protest. But maybe it is more attention grabbing than others. I don't know.
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