Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have been 78 today. Below is the complete I Have a Dream speech, given August 28, 1963 at The March on Washington (You can read it here.).
h/t Pam
Please share widely!
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Jon Keller’s interesting post on a way to keep Martin Luther King Day from becoming just another Monday holiday.
Depending on the community, the aim of such projects as Keller suggests could be much broader. The Southern Poverty Law Center has some wonderful resources for this.
…but I remember being a grade/middle/high school student. Service projects may be too ambitious for students who, like my former self, already push the limits on turning in half-ass homework assignments and projects. Might adding this requirement prompt kids to dread the yearly King Day curriculum and have a reverse effect that Keller is shooting for?
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That being said, Keller is on to something, and I do feel professional educators could design a “King Day” curriculum where an entire school day, perhaps April 4, is devoted to race/ethnic/gender equality studies and in-school projects, programs and workshops.
I don’t have any kids in school, so am not so up on the details. I wonder if curriculum is flexible enough these days to allow room for something like this? I hear a lot about ‘teaching to the test’. Do MCAS requirements/oressures reduce the possibility of creative things like this?
I don’t know, and I am far from an educator, but I wonder if the question is less about could it be done and more about do people want to do it? Think of the energy and logistics of designing and facilitating a dynamic daylong program that is interesting, valuable, and pedagogically sound. Would the educators designing and implementing such a program need new training for handling such sensitive materials?
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I’m only basing my questions on my experiences in middle/high school versus my experiences in college. In my mostly White school system, we were totally ignorant to gender issues, and our racial studies centered on watching selections from “Roots”. In college, discussions are often lead by Ph.Ds and students are exposed to a variety of scholarly works on the topic.
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I’m not saying that there are no teachers currently qualified to do such work, I’m just wondering if, given the amount of effort it may take to produce a quality “King Day” program in every school, educators and school districts would have the energy for such an ambitious project?
That’s why I linked to Tolerance.org above. They provide tons of ideas on how to introduce students to virtually any angle on the equality/bigotry issue. SOme of the exercises are quite simple, and many were developed by interested teachers. I think even I, a non-teacher, could lead a class through one sucessfully. So I don’t think special training is necessary for teachers who understand the point of the exercise (although always nice, huh, teachers?!). I bet it really comes down to, as you suggested, the will of the school or teacher to approach the topic, and also the time to do it during the semester.
And I did like that link.
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I’d love to see an MLK day in school that explored anything from something as general as watching the “I Have a Dream” speech to thoughtful and spirited discussions on the use of the word “nigger” to the Oakland School Board’s decision on ebonics and thousands of other mini-topics that just don’t fit into typical school curriculum.
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I think getting even more basic than what you’re suggesting would be really useful. for example, doing exercises that let majority kids feel what it’s like to be a minority, even if it’s only for 20 min. when your classmates start to too gleefully come up with derrogatory terms for you because you randomly chose the “wrong” color paper from the hat, the baselessness of bigotry becomes much more apparent. it is a memorable and meaningful experience. i said kids. really, this should be done with groups all the way up through college and beyond. churches would be a great place to do this with older folks.
First, great post.
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Second, for those who may not know, MLK studied for his doctorate at BU and lived at 387 Massachusetts Ave (marked with a small comemorative plaque). While in Boston, King met a New England Conservatory student named Coretta Scott.
a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.
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So, a law banning genetic engineering would be a just law, because people against genetic engineering are a majority and they are willing to follow the law themselves. They would compel a minority (transhumanists and postgenderists and eugencists) to follow it also. We should all be made the same way, by the natural union of a man and a woman. We should not allow any of us to be genetically engineered or cloned. This is sameness made legal.
The weakness of any majoritarian argument is that majorities change.
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1. Cloning technology if it becomes available in the near term will most likely be banned for everyone, with majority support — a just law by this definition.
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2. However it is probable that GE would be used to primarily ‘correct’ birth defects, not for full-scale cloning.
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3. Therefore as GE becomes more widely used, a majority will become more familiar with GE & fears will relax against wider application.
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4. As the technology matures, both the majoritarian argument against GE/cloning AND the technical ‘safety’ argument falls apart. Therefore all that is left is a teleological/moralist argument, that does not follow this definition of just law.
Yeah, you’ve outlined the plan nicely. Introduce GE as an option for people to use to allow them to ‘correct’ their genes, or to allow them to mate with someone of their same sex. Then it will gradually become more widely used, and applications will increase. What will happen though is people will begin to feel pressured to use GE to improve their child’s genes, they won’t feel they have much choice about it. It is even possible that we will not allow people with “bad” genes to use their own genes (though if they are somehow still fertile enough they might be able to do it through sex anyway, like Ethan Hawke’s parents in Gattaca). Some of us will be “gene rich” and some of us will be “gene poor”, and it will be the “rich rich” who are “gene rich” and the “poor poor” who are “gene poor”. Third world countries will fall even further behind, because they will have to care for people born with diseases that perhaps rich countries will no longer have to care for. And we will start to value people based on their genes, instead of accepting people and their disabilities.
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Yes, this is a moralist argument, not a safety argument, nor a simple majority argument. Clearly, both the safety and the public opposition will change if we them to. That is not a reason to allow them to. We should all be the same – the child of our mother and father. Sameness made law.
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And currently, right now, GE is unsafe and unpopular, so why is it still legal? Why don’t we enact the egg and sperm law now, along with the other half of the compromise that grants federal recognition to civil unions, and then – if it becomes safe or if a majority demands that it be legal – THEN we make it legal?!? And then, we’d convert civil unions to marriages, since they would then have the right to attempt to conceive.
Link to post
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My favorite band, U2, have two songs in which Martin Luther King is featured prominantly. Here are the YouTube Clips for Pride (In The Name of Love) and MLK, both from “The Unforgettable Fire”.