Dying a Different Sort of Death: The Exclusion of Children from School

Abstract

The flow upward in any culture of the oppressive elements, the agonies and realities of dehumanization, is not unlike the growth of plant cells. Only a few people see the seeds; the rest wait until the flowered stalk shoots high enough to pick, and then someone turns over the land, places the seeds deep inside it all over again, and the rest wait until something grows, as it did before. Each year a bit of dropping, a cutting, a spillover from the top falls on the ground and makes its way into the earth where maybe it touches the seeds and nurtures them in some way, and maybe it doesn't. It happens in the social order something like this too. Suddenly the students at prestigious colleges clamor about the prison-like conditions of their schools. The food is called institutional, classes are oversubscribed, teachers are unable to spend time with students, and then, incongruous as it seems, the school is called a prison. From deep down in the culture, the barely heard murmurings of the truly neglected and hurt people have been transformed into something powerful to be used as a new type of food for those who are already well nourished. Rich children pick the fruit, but poor children are