You should read this, from Mother Jones.
I hadn’t heard of Courtney Everts before I read it.
But she sounds like she had the right idea: you probably can’t change the systems around you, but you are responsible for how you live in them.
The entire reason for this blog is to present changes that (I think) would make the world a better place. By getting these ideas out of my head and into the wider world, it makes me feel like a contributor rather than just an observer.
I’m well aware that that’s probably wrong.
The odds of anything I write here having any measurable effect on the course of the world is slim at best. It’s possible and I’d be very happy of it were to happen, of course, but it’s unlikely.
But to some extent I can, like Courtney did, try to live the world I want to see. Like her I want to see a world where the same school system serves all the children in the community equally well, and where all the children get to see as wide a variety of people and lives as possible.
And public shools are hardly revolutionary.
(At least, not anymore they’re not. There was a time when they were quite the extremist idea.)
My children also attend our local public school; and we also could have chosen otherwise.
But having all the children in the community together in the schools is the right thing to do. I can’t stop the state from allowing public resources to be funneled away to private and charter schools, but I can choose not to participate in that.
And frankly, my kids are getting a better experience because of it. And they will grow up to be better people because of it, too.
So go read it.
Then go enroll your kids in your local public school.
