The education system in the United States of America has become something not fully complete. Throughout the history lessons taught in the schools, the stories from the side of the marginalized are being left out. The history lessons are being “whitewashed” for lack of a better term. Unfortunately, the histories told throughout the world are histories written by the “winners”. No one has wanted to hear the stories of those that lost. Until now. Now society wants to hear the other side. We want to hear the side of the less fortunate, the ones that had their dreams, goals, families, and very lives ripped out from underneath them.
All over social media right now is the image of little, Ruby Bridges, as she walks into an all-white school surrounded by armed deputies with the caption, “If this little girl was strong enough to survive it, your child is strong enough to learn about it.” What is the fear that this image brings up? It is the fear of the Anglo Americans that don’t want their children to know that they stood there shouting racial slurs or didn’t want an African American child in school with their precious Anglo children. United States education wants the sordid past of slavery and segregation to be wiped from the textbooks like it never happened or that it isn’t still happening. That little girl is a 68-year-old woman who still fights for the rights of marginalized students to this day.
So the stories that are told are the ones with "white" privilege and the stories that remain in the margins, but hopefully not for much longer, are the ones that need to be told for the under-served, the low-income, the ones persecuted for their religious beliefs, their sexual orientation, the color of their skin, the language that they speak, and so much more.
