The Value of an Accessible Education

My friend Michele Starkey shared this video with me today. While I believe her focus was more on the hardship of the children who cannot afford to go to school, what struck me about it was the efforts of a community to make that education more accessible to students who want it. It is remarkable how hard these people are fighting to make an education available to the children in their midst.

Michele looked back to the not so distant past, and saw a time when the situation was not so very different in her own family:

When we think of childhood we think of the following: A time to dream, a time to play and a time to develop their imaginations and their education. But for the kids of the Congo, days of backbreaking work in the scorching sun seems to be their only hope for survival in a country that is starving just to survive.

I thought of my own mother growing up in America. During the Great Depression, she worked for hours in the noonday sun picking apples and peaches in the orchards. It was backbreaking work too, for young boys and girls, but there were few labor laws in the U.S. during the 1930's

Regardless of how you feel about today's public schools, an accessible education of some kind (school- or home-based) is almost universally recognized as a right of all children. A discussion of what that implies can be very educational, on its own. I encourage families to discuss this together, and to take action where they see it is necessary.

You can read more of Michele's reflections on this issue in her article, Who Won't Be Going Back to School, at Associated Content. If you are touched in some way by the piece, please take a moment to leave Michele a comment or to view some of her other work. I know she'll appreciate it.