“I've been struggling to put into
words my thoughts about CPS re-opening plans: Terrifying, Nope, and Heartbroken
are definitely up there. Then, reading about the police violence carried out on
young people at the demonstrations last evening in Chicago--a 16 year old young
Black woman had her teeth knocked by club-wielding cops--it really crystalized
my feelings on this issue.
“They see our students, and by extension their educators, as a problem to be handled, apparently by any means necessary. Including with clubs and tear gas. Including knowingly exposing them to a deadly virus in the middle of global pandemic.
“I'm clear after hearing CPS scenarios of 7-hour school days, socially distanced from peers, masked, assigned seats, never moving from classroom except for terrifying field trips to the bathroom (that far too often have no soap and no hot water), that this has nothing to do with humane opportunities for learning and interaction and has everything to do with warehousing children while their parents are forced back to work. Working for a system that never worked for them. Problem solved.
“It shouldn't have to be said, but our students are not problems--children to be warehoused, teenagers to be disciplined, protesters to be controlled. Our students are people. People who can get sick. People who can spread illness. People who grieve when someone they love is sick. People who have ideas that should be listened to. People who are trying to change the world so that it starts to work for the many instead of a few.
“I stand with our students when they take down the relics of a system that has always worked at their expense. I stand with them as they fight the powerful for schools as sanctuaries from violence, free from guns and badges and metal detectors and other trappings of prison. And I stand with them against a system that has calculated that 2 percent or 4 percent or 6 percent of us perishing is just the price of doing business and that schooling is just an extension of business and business must go on.”
“They see our students, and by extension their educators, as a problem to be handled, apparently by any means necessary. Including with clubs and tear gas. Including knowingly exposing them to a deadly virus in the middle of global pandemic.
“I'm clear after hearing CPS scenarios of 7-hour school days, socially distanced from peers, masked, assigned seats, never moving from classroom except for terrifying field trips to the bathroom (that far too often have no soap and no hot water), that this has nothing to do with humane opportunities for learning and interaction and has everything to do with warehousing children while their parents are forced back to work. Working for a system that never worked for them. Problem solved.
“It shouldn't have to be said, but our students are not problems--children to be warehoused, teenagers to be disciplined, protesters to be controlled. Our students are people. People who can get sick. People who can spread illness. People who grieve when someone they love is sick. People who have ideas that should be listened to. People who are trying to change the world so that it starts to work for the many instead of a few.
“I stand with our students when they take down the relics of a system that has always worked at their expense. I stand with them as they fight the powerful for schools as sanctuaries from violence, free from guns and badges and metal detectors and other trappings of prison. And I stand with them against a system that has calculated that 2 percent or 4 percent or 6 percent of us perishing is just the price of doing business and that schooling is just an extension of business and business must go on.”
-Kirstin Roberts
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