This question keeps seeping into my mind and some days I don't have an answer for it. Those are the days like today when I get a text from a stranger with a picture of my daughter winning her first award for good grades at school- a ceremony I was not at because I am home in front of my computer typing away ANOTHER paper that counts for nothing more than a grade. It seeps into my mind when I am told by the same daughter on our walk to school that she is acting out because "you never have time to play with me anymore" or when I sit for hours "playing" with my children but can't focus on anything other than the building anxiety of what I am not doing for my PhDness.
But then visions of Burton Blatt's Christmas in Purgatory pass through my mind. And statistics of homeless, incarcerated and jobless youth with disabilities flash in my mind like lightning bolts. I picture the kids down the hall, forgotten by all their peers, who do crafts in high school and take separate busses on far away "field trips" to the Y with someone else dressing them, deciding what they will eat and even wiping their "$*&#S" because the teachers and leaders of that school deemed separate as equal.
I picture their moms and dad's trusting a system that separates children based on constructed ability lines and I think to myself, "No, I do not want it that bad, but WE NEED IT THAT BAD!"
And that folks, is why I push forward. I swallow my perfect mommy syndrome pride and I sacrifice. My kids sacrifice. My husband sacrifices and by gosh my wardrobe sacrifices. But we, the people of the global world, need a voice that amplifies not my own voice, but that of the separated and marginalized voices of our communities. So I continue...... do you?
Really? On what planet do you think academic's have any substantive amount of influence over policy? There are stacks of evidence showing that bilingual education is a positive thing and english only is bad, yet the policy-makers don't listen; they make laws based on prejudice and jingoism.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to fix those things, then skip the PhD and go into politics. You will have more influence in a matter of months as a lobbyist, working in a think tank or as a political staffer than you ever would have as an academic. And frankly, none of those other things require more than a Master's degree.