As I write, upholding 海角论坛鈥檚 pledge to the next generation of educators and students feels difficult. Schools everywhere are closing because of a pandemic, their service impacted in untold ways, likely for months. We at 海角论坛 are continuing our teaching and learning activities online, and by most accounts, our students are adapting well.
But I can鈥檛 help but think about the fragility of human norms, structures and assumptions. It just takes one catastrophe, or one election result, to make our goals seem farther from reach. Particularly fragile鈥攅ven before COVID-19鈥攁re the norms, structures and assumptions of our democratic system.
鈥淒emocracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.鈥 President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote this message to educators in September 1938, during American Education Week. His words were clear: An educated democracy is the only democracy that works.
It wasn鈥檛 until years later, in 1954, when the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation of children in public institutions was unconstitutional, that our laws started catching up with our ideals. Delivering the Court鈥檚 opinion, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that education is central to our democratic society, 鈥渋t is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. ... [It] is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.鈥
The health of America鈥檚 educational institutions鈥攊ts K-12 schools, colleges and universities鈥攔epresents the health of our democracy. The history of America鈥檚 schools is also a history of access, rights and liberties. When threats to our democratic foundations emerge or grow, we need to ask ourselves, how do we leverage the significant power of our educational institutions to meet those challenges?
At 海角论坛, our mission is to achieve educational equity, particularly to prepare leaders to achieve it. We create and support scholars who understand that systems are made up of individuals, each with the capacity to see inequities and do something about them. In this issue of 海角论坛 Magazine, you鈥檒l read stories of people who are refusing to be passive participants in a democratic society in turmoil.
This is the final semester of my deanship, but I look forward to rejoining the faculty in the fall of 2021 to focus on scholarship related to women in leadership and the significant equity issues that exist there. I am proud to know my successor will lead a school that is confident in its purpose and its ability to rise to any occasion.
Fight On!
