Redefining the Relationship of the Federal Government to the Education of Racial and Other Minority Groups

Abstract

The privilege of democracy is part of the singular heritage of America. It was not easily won. It is less easily maintained. To protect and develop that democracy is the responsibility of the people who share in its privileges. There is a legal maxim that he who sleeps on his rights loses them. The people must not, by negligence, place themselves in the position of being careless in defense of their own interests. Democracy, as any institution, is not static. It develops or decays. There are those who distrust democracy, who would prefer a more effective instrument for maintaining their group in power. They strive toward a totalitarian fascist state by which the economic rulers can legalize and perpetuate their class oppression. The safeguard against this is an articulate people organized in defense of democracy. People become vigilant and articulate to the extent that they are granted the opportunity through education. There is an instrument which the people have created-a free public school system-which can insure the development of such vigilance. The minority group which is working toward the perpetuation of its own power understands the significance of this instrument of enlightenment. Public education has become unendurable to those whom it threatens. It is not surprising then that an organized attack, national in scope, has been directed against the public school system. That attack takes the form of reduced budgets, curtailed and differentiated curricula. Translated into human experience it means for the children decreased school hours, dilapidated buildings, inadequate medical and dental care, insufficient text books and school materials. But an evil more dangerous than all of these faces the children and the people of America. That is the evil of class education. Posed against the educational philosophy of a people's culture is the philosophy based upon the perpetuation of existing class stratifications. This differentiation on the basis of what are apparently intellectual capabilities actually penalizes children of socially and economically oppressed groups. These children have been handicapped by environmental factors. Any school program predicated upon differences in which environmental factors play such a tremendous role, acts to freeze the individual and prevents him from developing his innate potentialities. A people's program of education should be predicated upon the possibility of removing these environmental handicaps. The division of children into bright, dull and normal groups with a different curriculum for each group is therefore as undemocratic as it is psychologically unsound. The use of the I.Q. as an instrument of pressuring children into groups with limited and undesirable curricula is