Eastern Wake Buzz - Good things connected to Knightdale High School happen on Facebook | newsobserver.com blogs
Submitted by dsherman dsherman@nando.com.
I wrote about a Facebook page recently that got a lot of people upset. The Facebook page aired frustrations and anger over the fatal shooting of Nigel Ellison, a Knightdale High School student.
I heard from people by e-mail who felt that writing about it gave Knightdale High School an unfairly bad reputation. Others wrote that writing about it could lead to more violence.
I don’t like it when bad things happen even when it makes for compelling copy. And so I was heartened to hear of another Facebook story from Knightdale social studies teacher LaToya Berry.
She told me that Jonathan Wall, a sophomore at Morehouse University in Atlanta, penned a thoughtful comment on Facebook about judging a Georgia public school math fest. About this time last year, over 5,000 1st-8th graders participated in the contest which was a combination of math and debate.
Wall wrote: The inequalities in education are something that I’ve always been passionate about understanding, and identifying the underlying factors of. Going to predominantly white schools on one side of town for grades K-8, and a predominantly black school on the other side for grades 9-12, helped me see more clearly the dividing line of educational quality. But yesterday, Saturday, March 28, 2009 I saw firsthand the overwhelming disparities that now plague America’s public schools.”
Wall went on to explain how the contest was judged and the results.
“I can’t even begin to describe the feelings and thoughts that raced through my heart and mind as I walked group after group of kids to the podium to be awarded their first place plaques…. Out of those 40 winners, only 3 were black. And two of them were on the same team. It troubles me that America’s Public Schools (AND PRIVATE, but that’s another situation) are still unequal and lack not only diversity, but equality in the distribution of education. Some try to blame it on the intellectual capacity of the kids, but that is definitely NOT the case. It all trickles down to the unequal distribution of educational RESOURCES. There is no reason for there to be such a wide gap in the academic skill-set of students in the same grade, in the same state.”
Wall’s Facebook comment ended up in an Atlanta newspaper. He was invited by nine civil rights activists and leaders from the 1960s to join them in creating charter schools for low-performing minority students.
And he’s gotten the attention of Georgia lawmakers and professors, impressed with his insights.
He was invited by the assistant superintendent of Georgia Charter Schools to serve as a principal of the day at a local school.
Good things do happen on Facebook and to Knightdale High students.
Read more: http://blogs.newsobserver.com/easternwake/good-things-connected-to-knightdale-high-school-happen-on-facebook#ixzz0lf17OIeH
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