Hungering for Justice

[George Sheridan <learn@jps.net>]

           >Friends, family and colleagues,

           >

           >Shortly after Jonathan Kozol made an appearance on

           >our campus, I formulated the attached Op Ed, titled

           >"Hungering for Educational Justice", concerning

           >his hunger strike against the No Child Left Behind Act.

           >I submitted this piece to the Albuquerque Journal

           >and to the NY Times ...

           >

           >It does not appear that it will be published in either

           >paper. Therefore, I am sharing it with friends and

           >colleagues. Please know that I welcome you to send it

           >further to friends, students, colleagues, listservs,

           >etc., if you are so moved. Thanks. Lois

           >

           >

           >

           >

           >Lois M. Meyer, Ph.D.

           >Associate Professor, and

           >Bilingual/ESL Program Coordinator

           >Language, Literacy & Sociocultural Studies

           >College of Education

           >Hokona 267

           >University of New Mexico

           >Albuquerque, NM 87131

           >Tel: 505/277-7244



Hungering for Educational Justice
Lois M. Meyer
University of New Mexico
lsmeyer@unm.edu


National Book Award-winning author and educator Jonathan Kozol recently explained
to an almost overflow audience at the University of New Mexico (UNM) why he
appeared thin and weak. For three months he has been on a hunger fast for
educational justice. Why? Because he can no longer stomach the gross injustices
he witnesses in classrooms and schools across the nation. Last July 1, two days
after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Brown vs. Board of Education, the historic
1954 decision that outlawed segregated schools and mandated school integration,
Kozol began his hunger fast against ?the racist agenda inherent in the federal
education reform act [No Child Left Behind} signed into law by President Bush in
2001?. His hunger strike is partial ? he supplements a liquid diet with some
solid nourishment at his doctor?s request to sustain life. But, he added, ?I'm
old now so I'm not afraid to do or say what I believe is right.?

We don't hear much about hunger strikes these days. Obesity, sure, bulimia,
maybe, but not hunger strikes. Our appetite for the likes of American Idol and
Desperate Housewives seems insatiable, while the idea of self-inflicted hunger as
a principled act of political protest and personal conviction causes us
intellectual if not gastric distress. Fasting for justice seems way more extreme
than Extreme Makeover. Non-violent hunger fasts may have helped Gandhi and Cesar
Chavez tumble colonial empires and unionize California lettuce fields, but that
was decades ago. Today both nonviolence and hunger fasting seem to have been
deleted from our consciousness and from our menu of possible political actions.

And fasting for educational justice? How would that improve the test scores of
low achieving children, or help failing schools meet Adequate Yearly Progress
(AYP)? In this age of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), even our concept of
educational justice is so shrunken and deformed by government spin that we act as
though test scores - rather than children?s creativity and excitement about
learning, or the priorities and cultural rights of parents and communities - are
what matter.

Many in the UNM crowd of new and experienced teachers, school administrators,
university students and professors, and concerned parents, were familiar with
what Kozol has said and done in the past. He has worked in inner-city schools for
more than 40 years, giving voice to children?s experiences of public schooling in
disturbing books such as Death at an Early Age, The Shame of the Nation, and
Savage Inequalities. His newest book, Letters to a Young Teacher, recounts his
year-long dialogue with an inexperienced first-grade teacher in a segregated
Black school in his home town, Boston. In it he promises to describe ?the joys
and challenges and passionate rewards of a beautiful profession? ? teaching.

Kozol made good on his promise, and in doing so, he fed a deep hunger in the
audience that night. Public school teachers are hungry to hear a public figure of
Kozol?s stature commend them with awe and pride and gratitude for their skills
and commitment to teaching. NCLB lays the blame for children?s poor test scores
on teachers and schools, and by implication, on parents and communities,
especially poor communities of color. It ignores mounds of data that document the
increasing inequalities among communities and social classes in family income,
health supports, even basics like adequate food and housing, all factors that
influence performance on achievement tests and students? opportunities to learn.
Instead, NCLB?s single-minded and simplistic solution to educational inequalities
is to hold educators, children and parents ?accountable?. In other words, they
are blamed and shamed as the ?cause? of the educational ?failure? of the very
children our society refuses to insure and opts instead to segregate, underfund,
push out of school, and ignore.

In stark contrast, Kozol celebrated the contributions of education professionals
as the strength and soul of public education. He encouraged especially young
teachers and those who are preparing to teach: ?Teachers I meet today are some of
the most gifted and enthusiastic I have ever seen. Especially those who teach
young children should not permit themselves to be drill sergeants of the State or
trainers for corporate global capitalism.?

Children command most of Kozol?s attention, real children with names like
Pineapple and Ariel and Shaniqua who populate the classrooms where he visits and
volunteers time. He denounced the educational injustices these children endure in
the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth ? resegregated schools;
overcrowded classrooms; narrow, test-driven curricula; rote, drill-and-kill
teaching methods. Though labeled by NCLB as ?failures?, the spirit of these
children is inspiring ? most still hunger to learn.

The federal law?s misplaced, child-damaging priorities are masked in deceptive
rhetoric about ?standards? and ?excellence? and ?global competitiveness?. NCLB
pretends to address quality education for children but its real concerns are
different. ?Why should kindergartners care about the global marketplace?? Kozol
demands. ?They care about bellybuttons and elbows and furry caterpillars.?
Curiosity about their world and joy in discovery, not test scores or world
markets, are what propel young children to learn.

Some words never appear in NCLB at all, ?words like curiosity, creativity,
laughter, and delight.? Some parents and communities, and undoubtedly
legislators, can demand for their children the best education money can buy, an
education that still challenges and delights. But too many Black and Hispanic and
Native American kids, and those with special needs or those who are still
learning English, are force-fed a stripped down, debased and test-driven
curriculum. Kozol?s conclusion was unflinching: ?It is deeply hypocritical to
hold 8 or 9 year olds accountable for their academic achievement but not hold
Congressional delegates and the president accountable for not providing poor kids
with the same education they themselves insist on giving to their own kids.?

Syndicated columnist Ruben Navarrete Jr.?s recent column (?Dismantle No Child
Left Behind and Watch us Fail?, Oct. 1) is a stark example of the deceptive
education talk fueled by NCLB. Navarrete claimed to speak in defense of the needs
and wants of children ?who don't vote, or give money, or twist arms, or pay union
dues?. Yet Navarrete never talked about children at all, not about their
feelings, their interests, their dreams, or their reaction to being labeled as
?failures?. Instead, Navarette?s column berates teachers' unions, the
Democratic-controlled Congress, and ?certain Republicans? for seeking to
eliminate the most punitive NCLB requirements. Navarrete applauded U.S. Education
Secretary Margaret Spellings as a ?ferocious defender? of NCLB.

Ferociously defending NCLB is a far cry from defending children and quality
instruction and educational justice for all. Kozol understands, as did Gandhi and
Chavez before him, that hunger for educational justice demands principled
political action if we are to dismantle federal education legislation that
intellectually starves our neediest children.

George Sheridan