We HAVE to TALK about racism and police brutality

[YarnAddict]

24. As I stated in my

response above, I am a 58-year old white woman who lives in the sticks of northern Michigan.

Admittedly, my knowledge is limited to my own experience.

I went to a public university in the 70's which had a microscopic minority enrollment, due to racial incidents that happened several years before I matriculated. There were a couple of Black women who lived on my floor my sophomore year. Neither one of them participated in group activities with the rest of us. One of them was very wealthy, and all wealthy people intimidate me, so I never made any overtures of friendship. She was out of my league, and I knew it.

No child should grow up feeling that there is anything they can't achieve, if they put their minds to it. Education should be equal for all.

When we moved to our small town over 20 years ago, the schools here had an extremely bad reputation. There was no money for the things I had always taken for granted were parts of public education--there was no p.e., no elementary art or music teacher, no field trips. Fewer than half of the kids tested scored "satisfactory" on the MEAP test--and that was touted as a huge achievement, as in "almost HALF of the kids here are satisfactory!!!!! Yay, us!!!!" Worse by far, was that there was a book on the shelf in the school library entitled "Someday Man May Walk on the Moon." It was like a monument to their who-gives-a-shit attitude.

What I did, and what virtually any parent can do, is decide that education doesn't only happen in the classroom. We made regular trips to the library, stimulated curiosity in our children, helped with homework and projects, and took pride in their accomplishments. In addition, I was constantly in contact with my kids' teachers. I stayed on top of things, and the teachers knew that I cared. The point is that $$$$$ in education isn't everything, and statistics show that the greatest indicator of educational success is parental involvement.