This excellent piece reminded me of all the years I spent as a teacher. My schools always asked us to have our students raise funds to buy gifts for poor children at Christmas time, or to get food delivered to poor families. But when I would push for more student activism for better policy that might address poverty (or at the very least, study of the causes of poverty and hunger in such a wealthy society), those sorts of things were dismissed as inappropriately “political”. As if supporting the status quo by making us all feel better about it by sticking band-aids (plasters?) on it was apolitical….
This excellent piece reminded me of all the years I spent as a teacher. My schools always asked us to have our students raise funds to buy gifts for poor children at Christmas time, or to get food delivered to poor families. But when I would push for more student activism for better policy that might address poverty (or at the very least, study of the causes of poverty and hunger in such a wealthy society), those sorts of things were dismissed as inappropriately “political”. As if supporting the status quo by making us all feel better about it by sticking band-aids (plasters?) on it was apolitical….