Panelists urge closing of racial gap in education

Moses, a former civil rights activist, highlighted the importance of closing the racial gap in education. The civil rights movement removed Jim Crow laws from many facets of American life, “but we didn’t get [Jim Crow] out of education,” Moses said.

Veasey and Moses discussed the Young People’s Project and their hope to amend the Constitution to make quality education a right for all students.

YPP works through an “each-one-teach-10 model,” Veasey said. Under the system, one student is taught a skill that he or she then teaches to 10 peers. The goal of this system is to start a chain reaction of improved learning, Veasey explained.

Salvador Perez, a high school senior involved in YPP, shared the story of his struggle in school. Once he began the program, he said, his grades improved.

“It’s movements like these that remind me of great people,” said Yvonne Garcia, another YPP high school senior.

Perry spoke of her own education reform strategy, which has three main components: creation of knowledge, partnership and activism. “To advocate for quality education is not simply a matter of doing charitable work,” she said.

Defining quality education, the knowledge creation component, cannot be achieved simply by attending school, Perry said.

“One of the outcomes [the QECR grassroots movement] would like to see ... is to start the process of building a collective consensus around what quality education is,” Veasey added.

Another goal of QECR is to center dialogue on education around the student. One flaw of other efforts to reform education is the lack of students’ voices, Veasey said.

Audience members said they were receptive to the message.

Zahava Stadler ’11 said she appreciated the philosophy that “rather than being top-down,” education reform should be “very bottom-up.”

It is important to realize that “children are people,” added Sarah Fingerhood ’11, explaining that it is impossible to prescribe one educational method to students who all learn differently.

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Rebeca Gamez-Djokic ’05, a graduate of Princeton’s Program in Teacher Preparation, said that the speakers gave her something to think about regarding her power in her own classroom. “It’s not just about me and the classroom,” she said.

Moses explained that students interested in education reform must address the demand side of the problem. “Unless they rise up and demand something, nothing’s going to happen,” he said.

Addressing undergraduates in the audience, Perry explained that in order to be truly involved in education reform, they must realize that having an elite education does not equate to an understanding of how society functions. Rather, they must understand the significance of learning in all social contexts, she said.