Singing in Dark Times

The Supreme Court has upheld this right again and again-in the famous 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision the court noted that "education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments," and that it stands as "the very foundation of good citizenship." Knowing and accepting one's place on the grand pyramid of winners and losers becomes the core lesson in these places, and as schools develop elaborate schemes for managing the unruly mob, they turn to the familiar technologies of constraint-ID cards, transparent backpacks, uniform dress codes, cameras, armed guards, metal detectors, random searches. Education for free people-public education-is powered by a particularly precious if vulnerable ideal: every human being is of infinite and incalculable value, each a work in progress and a force in motion, each a unique intellectual, emotional, physical, spiritual, moral, and creative force, each of us born equal in dignity and rights, each endowed with reason and conscience and agency, each deserving a dedicated place in a community of solidarity as well as a vital sense of brotherhood and sisterhood, recognition and respect. School people who embrace that basic ethic and spirit struggle to resist the sorting of students into winners and losers as well as the relentless deficit-oriented labeling of youth, and recognize that the fullest development of each individual-given the tremendous range of ability and the delicious stew of race, ethnicity, points of origin, and background-is the necessary condition for the full development of the entire community, and, conversely, that the fullest development of all is essential for the full development of each.