Some 77% of young Americans are unqualified for military service because of overweightness, drug abuse, psychological issues, or physical unfitness. (Military.com, 9/28/2022). When we include cognitive or education ineptness, this situation indicts the entire nation.
“The only method that can render a democratic form of government durable is the dissemination of the seeds of virtue and knowledge through every part of the nation in the proper places and by the proper modes of education.”
–Benjamin Rush
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), if done properly, would ensure high quality/high quantity education for ALL Americans. NB: physical fitness levels increase with increasing levels of education.
Webster’s definition of education encompasses what schools must do for American citizens individually, and, thus, for the nation. Moreover, it clarifies the principal reason Trumpists attack the objectives of DEI, just as despots have done throughout history, making them domestic enemies of the worst kind.
“It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowledge of the sciences, but may implant in the minds of the American youth the principles of virtue and of liberty and inspire them with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable attachment to their own country.” Noah Webster
One of my recurring nightmares is that I was born after BROWN and instead of Miss Gilbert’s first grade class in Gilmer Elementary School in Roanoke, Virginia’s Black education community, I find myself in the classroom with one of the white teachers surveyed in the study reported by MIT which found widespread racial bias against Black children. Then, my achievements in education, the Air Force and public service, while certainly not impossible, would have been considerably less probable since I was born poor, Black and weird. As a consequence of being born when and where I was, a pre-BROWN baby, I was prepared to graduate with high honor from every school I attended, military and civilian, including Phi Beta Kappa, and free college education BA through the PhD.
People in 32 US states and Lithuania where I have done more than 7,000 seminars and workshops have heard about the emblematic Miss Gilbert. I use her to symbolize all seven of my teachers from Pre-K, through sixth grade, who provided the base for all of my subsequent learning. I give the symbolic her more credit for my having earned a PhD than I give to my really great junior and high school teachers, and the chair of my PhD committee, Dr. Andrew Scott. But not for Miss Gilbert, Dr. Scott is not likely to have seen me. Miss Gilbert, the symbol, was truly a Fugitive Pedagogist; and Trump would hate her.
Ignorance is the most complete slavery known to humankind. – Epictetus
Black education was subversive from its inception, conducted in defiance of law and custom, even under threat of violence. Teachers unwilling to accept coercive restrictions developed a tradition of Fugitive Pedagogy, a theory and practice of Black education epitomized by Carter G. Woodson. Woodson sought to persuade teachers and students to see themselves and their mission as set apart from the anti-Black world. Teachers, students, families and communities (e.g., Roanoke’s Black Community) worked together to fight for educational power in our Black schools. Forged in slavery, and honed under Jim Crow, the educational vision Woodson Articulated so passionately and effectively remains essential today. (From Jarvis R. Givens, FUGITIVE PEDAGOGY)
Attacks against the objectives of DEI began even before the EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION was enacted, as early as 1830.
In southern states, after the Civil War, Black Codes, effectively the Southern Law, made it illegal for Black people to learn to read and write. Violators were punished with fines, floggings, or imprisonment. The major purpose of these laws was to preserve slavery through ignorance.
In 1896, the Plessy v. Ferguson decision rendered Separate but Equal education legal.
Dr. Carter G. Woodson understood the intractable relationship among Education, Democracy and Freedom:
“The so-called modern education, with all its defects does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker peoples.”
No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. – Charles M. Schulz
In 2017, only 9% of low income Black ACT test-takers who were first in their family to attend college met the college readiness criteria.
In 2021, only 6% of Black ACT test-takers were rated ready for college-level courses in English, mathematics, science, and reading. (The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 2022)
Educated people vote consistently in all elections and favor Democratic Principles. They will vote during Virginia’s April 21st Referendum on Democracy and the Midterms, November 3, 2026.
