Our Public Schools: Inclusive Mission Brings Us All Together

Abstract

On a May Iowa morning, I sat in the sunlight pouring through the colored windows into Herrick Chapel at Grinnell College as I listened to one of my daughter’s classmates present her Baccalaureate address. Thirty-three years after my own graduation from this college, I had returned to celebrate with my daughter as she graduated. As I began to listen to Ms. Julia Haltiwanger, I did not realize that her speech and the other graduation events would become an important lens through which I would spend the summer reflecting on my work as a public schools advocate for the United Church of Christ. Ms. Haltiwanger exhorted her classmates to change the world, not so much because of the horrible injustices that surround us all, but because, “A world so full of important and wonderful things leaves absolutely no room for apathy and no excuse for being jaded.” “When we care, when we do the best we can to make things better, we’re doing it because of the things and people that are important to us. We should all be activists because of all the things we love about our world, the beautiful things that make us glad to be alive.” Ms. Haltiwanger’s speech has challenged me. Working as I do in the Justice and Witness Ministries of the UCC, I know that I cannot follow her advice entirely. Working as I do to eliminate economic and racial injustices in public schools in the United States, I am called to put the spotlight on injustice itself, to tear the blinders off the eyes of smug people who deny inequity and prefer to pretend we can manage away social injustice with a quick, simple remedy. As our nation’s largest social institution, public schools embody attitudes that desperately need challenging-attitudes about race and poverty, power and privilege, and cultural dominance and marginalization. Our unwillingness as citizens to fund public schools in particular locations is especially troubling because it reflects our attitudes, our biases, and frequently a level of bigotry we all prefer to deny. But what about following Ms. Haltiwanger’s advice? Should we set about working for public education justice on the premise that the schools many have come to disdain as “failing schools” are somehow worthy and