Imagining the emergence of some kind of “Great Lakes Culture” brings to mind one of the finest spirits of the movements of the past generation, Detroit elder activist Grace Lee Boggs:
"If , on the other hand, we acknowledged and honored our children’s souls, our schools would engage them in community-building activities with the same audacity with which the civil rights movement engaged them in desegregation activities 40 years ago: planting community gardens, recycling waste, organizing neighborhood arts and health festivals, rehabbing houses, painting public murals.
"By giving our children and young people a better reason to learn than just the individualistic one of getting a job or making more money, by encouraging them to exercise their Soul Power, we would get their cognitive juices flowing. Learning would come from practice which has always been the best way to learn.
"Instead of trying to bully young people to remain in classrooms organized to prepare them to become cogs in the existing economic structures, we need to recognize that the reason why so many young people drop out from inner city schools is because they are voting with their feet against a system which sorts, tracks, tests, and rejects or certifies them like products of a factory.
"They are crying out for another kind of education that values them as human beings and gives them opportunities to exercise their Soul Power."
LIVING FOR CHANGE Honoring our Children’s Souls By Grace Lee Boggs (June 27, 1915 – October 5, 2015
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