Is it truly the poor conditions in the schools that results in the plaintiffs attaining a low standard of reading?
Case one in contrast: It’s a story from quite a number of years ago in New York City. A “minority” kid in a regular NYC high school was getting straight As. At some point the school wanted to contact his parents, but not for any disciplinary problem; for some other reason. The letter came back, saying the persons the letter was addressed to did not live there.
It took some time but after awhile the sad but amazing truth came out. The kid was homeless and by himself. In was living in a cardboard box hut he crammed in a tight space between two residential buildings on Manhattan’s east side. His mother had abandoned him, left him on the streets when he was 12 or 13. He had gotten a doorman at one of the nearby apartment buildings to get mail addressed to him or his parents at that address. He went every morning to a nearby YMCA for showers, did odd jobs for whomever he could in the neighborhood, took his school work to a Library as often as he could, stayed out of trouble and concentrated on his determination to get a good education, by himself.
But one day his doorman friend was absent and the substitute that day did not know about the arrangement to take the kids mail.
However, just understand what that kid was doing and did!! Do you think any condition at that school was going to disuade him. I don’t. I think his achievement was never going to depend on the taxpayers investment in his school.
Second case, which was very recently.
Again it is a case of a “minority” (black) kid in a souhern state in a rural area. He is an 11 year old who has been accepted at Southern University. He’s never been to a school; he’s been home schooled. A professor at Southern Univesity heard somehow about the kid and arranged for the kid to take a speacial exam. When they took the results and the folks at Southern talked about, they agreed to let the kid go ahead and start classes there; making him go through formal high schooling was going to be a waste of time.
There are more examples I am sure, but my point is, to me, that nothing matches the importance of the determination of someone to get an education, NOTHING, when it comes to whether or not they get one. And further, is my belief, that that determination with persistence supporting it, can overcome lots of hurdles in getting that education.
So, I would unfortunately, working for the defense, be attacked mercilessly for how strongly I would interrogate the plaintiffs as to how their own habits demonstrated a determination to get an education along with what support they got from their parents, as well as lacking that support how they overcame it. My defense would also bring in every case I was allowed - like the ones above - demonstrating the critical importance of a student’s own determination to get an education, even in the face of hardships.
I would end with the case of a primary school kid sitting at tables outside a McDonalds every day in Manila in the Phillipines. By age he should have been in school in third grade but there he sat all day at that McDonalds. Oh, he always had some kind of book, pencil and paper with him. Why was he there? His mother worked there. But why wasn’t he in school? His single-parent mom did not earn enough money for the school uniform and the little tuition, they needed all her income just for food and their tiny house. But he was determined to find some way to study on his own so he could one day earn enough money to help his mom. He was using old books he found in the trash to try to teach him to read and write better and learn math ON HIS OWN DAMNIT. (makes me so sad and angry, and humble, just thinking about that kid. DETERMINATION TO EDUCATE YOURSELF. From a tiny very poor kid, and yet he knew it better than all the experts here that are always claiming its about how much are taxpayers paying for schools.
My G-d people wake up. It’s not the money.
Well said.