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http://educationpolicyblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/brown-v-board-of-education-after-55.html
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Today is the 55th anniversary of the United States Supreme Court's declaration that 'separate but equal' is not a viable approach to education - that it was never, in fact, equal even if the communities involved wished to claim otherwise.
The above link goes into some of the underlying issues then, since, and now far more thoroughly than I would have thought to. It included bits I'd not known, including a Virginia county's response to totally shut down their public schools rather than permit them to be integrated!
It has a couple of quotes from a later decision in which SCOTUS observed that education is not a (US) constitutionally protected right:
Justice Thurgood Marshall, who had won Brown v. Board of Education as an attorney, responded in his dissent:
"Separate but equal" is the education system mandated by our funding mechanisms and by our economic structures. It is no more equal, no more appropriate today than it ever was.
Perhaps it is time that education be given status as a right. Perhaps it is time for another Constitutional amendment.
**********
Today is the 55th anniversary of the United States Supreme Court's declaration that 'separate but equal' is not a viable approach to education - that it was never, in fact, equal even if the communities involved wished to claim otherwise.
The above link goes into some of the underlying issues then, since, and now far more thoroughly than I would have thought to. It included bits I'd not known, including a Virginia county's response to totally shut down their public schools rather than permit them to be integrated!
It has a couple of quotes from a later decision in which SCOTUS observed that education is not a (US) constitutionally protected right:
Justice Lewis Powell agreed. “Though education is one of the most important services performed by the state, it is not within the limited category of rights recognized by this Court as guaranteed by the Constitution.” If it were, Powell conceded, “virtually every State will not pass muster.”
Justice Thurgood Marshall, who had won Brown v. Board of Education as an attorney, responded in his dissent:
“The Court concludes that public education is not constitutionally guaranteed,” he wrote, even though “no other state function is so uniformly recognized as an essential element of our society’s well being.”
"Separate but equal" is the education system mandated by our funding mechanisms and by our economic structures. It is no more equal, no more appropriate today than it ever was.
Perhaps it is time that education be given status as a right. Perhaps it is time for another Constitutional amendment.
