AWake Up and Dream!

Rev. Dr. Bernice Powell Jackson

Message for FIXING No Child Left Behind Event

Washington, D.C.,  March 9, 2007 

I don't know about you, but for me it is so exciting to be here with you.  Exciting to be around so many activists.  Exciting to talk about issues which I am passionate about.  Exciting to be in Washington at this time and place. So I thank Jan Resseger and those of the NCC Justice Committee on Public Education and Literacy for the invitation and for their relentless work on behalf of us all.  This is so important.

In the 28th chapter of Genesis is the story of Jacob, falling asleep with a rock for his pillow and dreaming of a ladder reaching up to heaven, with angels ascending and descending.  In his dream, God stood by the ladder to remind Jacob that the same God who had been with Jacob and his ancestors would not leave him now.  And Jacob woke up and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it.” 

Surely the Lord is in this place...in this city...in this nation...in this world and we do not know it.  I'd like to spend a few minutes this morning reflecting on the theme, AWake Up and Dream.

On the wall in my study is a Norman Rockwell painting of a little black girl, all dressed up in her white dress and shoes and socks, her braids tied with little white bows, carrying her schoolbook and her ruler. Behind her were two federal marshals, in front of her two more. On the wall they were walking past is that ugly n word.  Painted a half a century ago, it was entitled “The Problem We Live With.”

The little girl, as we know today, was Ruby Bridges, who was the little 6 year old who integrated public schools in New Orleans in 1960.  The little girl who walked past screaming mobs every day for months to go to school.  The little girl who ended up attending school all by herself when the white parents refused to send their children to school with her.

Today's children in the New Orleans public schools face a different kind of reality.  No longer screaming mobs or federal marshals.  Instead, the state seized control of most of the city-run schools in the aftermath of the hurricane. Every one of the 7,500 teachers and support staff were fired. The Bush administration quickly provided funds for charter schools. Probably the only funds provided quickly, I might add.

Today, there are 53 public schools.  Five are run by the Orleans parish school board.  Seventeen are run by the state.  31 are charter schools.  No more neighborhood schools. Ruby Bridges couldn't walk to school in today's New Orleans. 

Welcome to market economy schools.  Hello buildings with no books in the library, cold food for children living in trailers, high schools with more security guards than teachers. Greetings from a system where 200 children went to school for the first time this school year at the beginning of February because there were no places for them and I believe there are still children who are not in school because there is no room at the inn. 

In the most traumatized city in the nation, where some children have moved five or six times in the past two years; where children waded through chest high water or lived through days and nights in the Superdome or Convention Center; where children have lost grandparents to unexpected death, lost track of friends, lost their homes and toys and pets; where some high school students have returned to the city without their parents who can't find jobs in the city; where three or four children and their parents are sharing a tiny little FEMA trailer; in this city, there are only a handful of child psychologists.  I don't know if there are any in the schools.

Now, if you think that this horror story is only because of the decimation caused by Hurricane Katrina, think again.  Oh sure, there is no doubt that the intensity of the situation in New Orleans is due to the aftermath of the hurricane, but, make no mistake about it .  If you live in any major city in this nation, the privatization of the schools is coming to a theater near you.  It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when and a matter of how much.

Mr. Rockwell, the problem we live with today … is the creeping privatization of schools across America.  The problem we live with today is not little Ruby having to walk past screaming mobs, it's little Ruby walking past sheer silent indifference.  It's little Ruby dealing with a different kind of isolation and invisibility. 

Indifference.  Isolation.  Invisibility. 

Indifference. In the days of Ruby Bridges, those who supported school integration were in the streets.  Those who opposed school integration were in the streets.  Today — no one is in the streets.  Schools going under all across the nation, with a $40 billion unfunded mandate.  No one in the streets.  Schools labeled failing, facing closure.  No one in the streets. Teachers without credentials in too many classrooms.  No one in the streets. Good teachers burning out, buying supplies out of their own pockets. No one in the streets. Teachers teaching for the tests rather than for critical, analytical thinking skills.  No surprise that there's no one in the streets. Indifference.

Isolation.  Children today are more likely to attend one race schools than those of 30 years ago, and the Supreme Court has approved this.  Did little Ruby endure the name-calling mobs for this?  The Rubies of today may have others in the desks next to them, but they all look just like her. Did little Ruby endure the months of no children to play with, no children to learn with for this?  How are we preparing our children to be leaders in this new multi-racial, multi-cultural world when they learn in racial isolation, eat in racial isolation, play in racial isolation? What does it mean for our nation's future that poor children know only poor children, that rich children know only others who live in luxury? Isolation.

Invisibility.  Out of sight out of mind. One of the reasons that apartheid survived so long in South Africa was that blacks were living in townships outside the city and whites never had to see the squalid living conditions, the shanties on the dirt roads, the lack of sewage or electricity, the dirt floor school rooms with corrugated tin roofs and no books, let alone libraries or cafeterias.  They didn't have to see it, so they could believe that it was not happening in their country.  Invisibility.

That is happening here and now.  But what is also happening and is even more invidious is the invisibility of what too many children have to deal with just to get to school every morning.  Too many children are hungry.  Too many children are faced with domestic violence.  Too many children have parents who not only don't help them with homework, but who discourage them from schoolwork.  Too many children live in homes were drugs and alcohol are used in front of them every day. Too many children live with peer pressure not to succeed in school. Too many children never go to the doctor or dentist or to have their eyes checked because they have no health insurance. Too many children live in homes with 50 inch screen televisions but no computers.  Too many children live in homes where they are called dumb or stupid or ugly or fat. Too many children are ignored by parents, left to raise themselves or to be raised by nannies or cooks. Too many children live in homes where no one reads to them at night, where no one hugs them in the morning, where no one prays for them to have a safe and productive day. These are the invisible things packed into the backpacks of too many children today.  And these invisible realities are never taken into account by No Child Left Behind.  These things insure that many children will be left behind, not only in their grades but in their life.

These left behind children become the prisoners in one of the fastest growing industries in America. These left behind children sit on the street corners of New York or Dallas playing dominoes, sit in the menial labor pick-up places in Washington, DC or Los Angeles.  These left behind children, if they work at all, work cleaning offices or hotel rooms, or in nursing homes or loading and stocking Wal-marts. These left behind children sell dope or their bodies or worse.  Unlike their parents and grandparents, these left behind children are not needed to work in the fields or factories...and so they go to war or to prison. 

We have averted our eyes to these people.  Invisibility.

Jacob's words from his dream come back to haunt us, come back to inspire us.  God is in this place and we don't even know it.  Now, Jacob's testimony was pretty remarkable.  Remember, he was fleeing his home for his life, after he had lied to his father at the urging of his mother and stolen his brother's inheritance.  So it must have come as a surprise to him that God was present even with him.

The children's book about Ruby Bridges, written by Robert Coles, tells the story, which I don't even know if it is true, that Ruby's calmness in the midst of the storm mystified her teacher.  One day the teacher looked out the window at little Ruby going past the mobs and stopping in front of them.  She seemed to be talking with them.  When the teacher later asked her what she was saying to them, Ruby replied that she wasn't talking with them, she was praying for them.  She normally stopped before she got to the crowd and prayed for the people.  But this morning she had forgotten to, so she stopped when she got to them to pray for them. God was in that place and they didn't even know it.

The remarkable thing for me about working with the people of Beecher Memorial United Church of Christ and with other churches in New Orleans right now is that the people there know that God is in that place, even if there are moments when we feel we don't know it.

So, as desperate as things may feel right now for public education, God is in this place and we don't even know it.  We just have to wake up....and dream.

Normally, we think of dreams occurring, like Jacob's, while we sleep.  But Martin Luther King, Jr's famous speech reminded us otherwise.