Detroit High School Protest: Students Suspended After Demanding an Education

This article speaks to various discrepancies and administrative inadequacies that impact the organizational structure of secondary educational systems. I enjoyed reading about the activism from the students perspective. It is noted in the article that 50 students were suspended for simply fighting for an education. Within the organizational structure and shifts in administration, include the "re-assignment of principals on numerous occasions, lack of consistent teachers, educators who abuse time, and shortage of textbooks." It is nice to note that teachers that abuse sick time will be reprimanded, but at what point is attention drawn to the issue of lack of resources, management and leadership in secondary institutions. It literally takes students to go through suspension and miss days of school in order for their request to be heard.

While this issue pertains to Fredrick Douglass High School (how ironic the name), mistreatment of students and denial of proper resources can be applied to various instances within the education spectrum: pre-school, elementary, junior high school, community college, and four year institutions. Students bare the grunt of the work in fighting for the education. In the instances of college students, we have to fight for resources while having the burden of paying the increasing cost to attend college. College once seen as a pathway to economic and social mobility is deterring students from enrollment. More sickening is the ill social secondary institutions that do no provide the proper leadership, teachers and resources for students that want them.

Coming from California, I often have to fight for basic resources my brothers should have. Literally, every-time I visit home, I schedule a meeting with my brothers high school counselor. I have to make sure she provides my brothers with the necessary information pertaining to college admissions. Granted there is responsibility on my siblings behalf, however educational resources should not be given to some and not to others.

I commend these students in their endeavors to fight for an education that they want. I certainly pray the bureaucracy of the education administration does not deter them from their fight for educational resources.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/30/detroit-high-school-prote_n_1392436.html