Dissent by pre-Brown court case really lays out democracy in education.

[no_hypocrisy]

Judge Henry Edgerton of the Washington, D.C. district court said: “The education required for living in a cosmopolitan community, and especially for living in a humane and democratic country and promoting its ideals, cannot be obtained on either side of a fence that separates a more privileged majority and a less privileged minority.” -- dissent in Carr v. Corning (1950).

With the systematic defunding of public schools by charades like No Child Left Behind, impossible and unfunded mandates, and the spectre of private school vouchers (including parochiaid), there will be a time in the near future, where there wil be a definite delineation between a "more privileged majority and a less privileged minority", and ironically, the latter will be quite democratic as its demographics will reflect representations from all ethnic and racial groups. The bright line/fence will be the ability to pay for the education needed to be more than slaves to the privileged. Edgerton's rebuke will be for all of us, not just African-Americans.


(BTW, Justice Edgerton was the first federal judge to hire an African-American law clerk and a female law clerk.)