Reflection on In Class Assignment: Educational Debt

I was recently presented with a Call to Action assignment based  on the works of Quigley and Ladson-Billings.  The project that was assigned came with virtually no parameters.  I was a little unsure, initially, how to proceed and respond to this "call to action."  Music is something that touches me and while I was listening to the speech of Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, I was certainly enthralled with her words and her ability to bring attention to a larger problem ... this notion of a Educational Debt as opposed to an Achievement Gap.

The use of the term Achievement Gap, Dr. Ladson-Billings explains, really minimizes the struggle and places the responsibility on the children, the families and even the individual teacher.  By taking this thinking into a broader context, we can begin to understand that this is more of an education Debt that is the direct result of decades of marginalizing children and not properly and equitably funding education.

My initial response to this assignment was one of confusion.  Not knowing the expectation or having a model left me wide open ...too wide open.  So, I just thought about what does appeal to me.  As I began to dissect her speech, I thought about the fact that I would love for everyone, my teachers included, to take the time to really listen in on what she had to say.  Recognizing they would not be likely to take an hour to listen to and think about her speech, I took the liberty of pulling out some of the context that was most appealing to me.  I ripped pieces of her speech and layered it over the song "Man In The Mirror" by Michael Jackson.  This was an attempt to bring two things together ... the reality of where we are with the focus being on our engagement as a society.

I learned that this notion of an Educational Debt needs to be taken mainstream.  We are in educational crisis.  We continue to attempt to isolate variables like people, conditions, programs and schools, but that minimizes the problem.  It is a problem and it is everyone's problem.  There is no program, individual, or single school house that will pay down this debt.  It will require a paradigm shift.