Acknowledging Privilege, Disrupting Privilege

SpeEdChange.at.Medium

IS 293, “Nathan Hale Middle School,” in Brooklyn, NY. The subject of Nice White Parents, the New York Times/Serial Podcast Series.

Exclusionary “Learning Pods” are not just racist, and of course classist, let’s state the obvious, but they are also violence against children, and we must say this.

Broadband access in this nation is racist and classist and an assault on rural children and children everywhere whose parents lack resources. We must say this.

The way schools are funded, including via PTA/PTO fundraising is racist and classist and represents violence against children everywhere whose parents lack resources. We must say this.

“The timeline of the series stops at the pandemic. But Ms. Joffe-Walt said the nation’s education system is at a pivotal juncture, noting the future could be indelibly shaped by white parents.

“We’re at the beginning of a huge shift,” she said, before adding that the move will be “either away from the public school system we have now and privatizing access to resources, or doubling down on the mission of public schools, with white families coming to a reckoning about our role in this public institution. It feels that both are just as likely to happen.”’

There is no doubt that COVID-19 represents an unprecedented national and global crisis — different from the 1918–1919 flu and other viral outbreaks since the Bubonic…