OPINION | Gwen Rockwood: Inside a public-school classroom |
It is late at night. I just finished reading a pile of essays, the first writing assignment in my new classes of the spring semester. Students were to write a personal reflection on identity—who they are, why, and how it feels to be in their skin. The essays are confidential and thus I invited them to tell me anything they want me to know about them.
Every semester without fail, my heart is broken over and over by their stories. I often think that if anyone responsible for education policy and funding could read them and know these students like I do, things would change. They would have to. And not just education policy and funding, but everything else. Because a public-school classroom is a cross-section of humanity. If you want to know what Arkansas is, who our people are, and what they need, look no further. The public-school classroom, with its absence of filters, can educate us all on those things.
And this is precisely why public school is so important. Not only could going back to school for a refresher in reality re-educate our policymakers, but it also teaches us all what Arkansas is. Who our people are. And what we all need. Public school is an invitation to empathy. That so many presently choose to devalue that invitation—and empathy—should set off alarm bells. Because without it, none of us gets the Arkansas we want, a society that is a better place for everyone to live.
I spoke with a reader from Little Rock the other day who had reached out via email several times on this matter, offering to share another perspective. The phone call was easy and amiable. I liked him and he liked me. We share a small-town, white, middle-class public-school background. The difference is that now he’s a wealthy businessman living in the city. I think because I am so vehemently opposed to vouchers, the reader supposed I had never heard his side of the argument, which was that LEARNS is about Little Rock, where the schools are stuck in 1957.
Basically, he pays an exorbitant amount of property taxes because of the neighborhood where he lives, and he would prefer to send his kids to public school, but there is not a public-school option he feels would meet the needs of his children. He feels there are so many........