We're now segregating our schools based on economics; we're segregating our schools based on where a child's parents live. And it has the same corrosive effect of destroying people's opportunity as racial segregation did.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the detrimental effects of economic segregation in schools on children's opportunities, akin to the harms of racial segregation.
David Boies draws a parallel between economic segregation in schools and the historical injustices of racial segregation. He argues that when schools are divided based on the socio-economic status of families, it results in significant disparities in educational opportunities for children. This segregation not only limits personal growth but also perpetuates systemic inequality in society, undermining the principle of equal opportunity that education should provide.
In practice
In a speech about education reform, one might say, 'As David Boies pointed out, our current system is perpetuating inequality, similar to how racial segregation harmed opportunities in the past.'
One of the things that the court held in Brown v. Board of Education is that government can't impose a badge of inferiority on some of its citizens. Yet that is exactly what Proposition 8 does with respect to gay and lesbian couples in California.
It's terribly important that we extend the promise of equality that the Supreme Court and that the district court articulated in the DOMA case and in the Perry case to all Americans in all 50 states.
The very purpose of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution is to protect minority rights against majority voters. Every court decision that strikes down discriminatory legislation, including past Supreme Court decisions, affirming the fundamental rights to marry the person you love, overrules a majority decision.
We put fear and prejudice on trial, and fear and prejudice lost.
Unlike people of my generation, my children and my grandchildren have grown up living with, knowing, people who were outwardly gay and lesbian. And they have learned that they're just like us... And when you see that they're just like us, the rationale for discrimination melts away.
No one learns as much about a subject as one who is forced to teach it.
I was going to show my kids that no matter what happened with their parents, parole officers and other teachers, I wouldn't give up on them. I let them know it matters to me that you come to class, it matters to me that you try, it matters to me when you succeed.
It is easier to go to the Internet than to go to the library, undoubtedly. But the shift from no libraries to the existence of libraries was a much greater shift than what we've seen with the Internet's development.
I know because I read...Your mind is not a cage. It's a garden. And it requires cultivating.
Adult helplessness destroys children. Or it forces them to become tiny adults of their own.
Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own - but that we could never have described on our own.
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