How ideological positions may blind us to what is - and to what is appropriate.
"Justice's lawsuit takes a bizarre turn to keep kids in rotten schools."
"Under Louisiana's voucher law, only students from families with incomes below 250% of the poverty line and who attend schools with a C grade or below are eligible for vouchers. Black kids received over 85% of the 6,800 vouchers this year, and 93% of their parents express satisfaction with the program.
But that doesn't matter to (Department of Justice) prosecutors, who sued in August on grounds that vouchers may lead to segregation under judicial orders dating to the 1970s. The original lawsuit literally claims, for instance, that black kids who use vouchers to attend private schools could leave public schools more white.
This objection has proven to be unfounded..... so now DOJ says it wants federal Judge Ivan Lemelle to approve a "process to ensure that the State provides necessary information and complies with its desegregation obligations." The goal here is to put the federal bureaucracy in charge.
Justice wants to review data on all voucher applicants including their race, public school district, whether and why they are granted a voucher and the private school to which they were assigned. And it wants that info at least 45 days before parents are notified that their kids will get a voucher. Why? Because the feds don't want parents to know if the feds knock their kids from the voucher list....."
For the full article, see:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304791704579210202920302792?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
Does similar blindness occur in our life?
And if and when it does, what helps us notice this?
Even more important, what enables and supports us to have the courage to act on what is, rather than holding only to what we believe or with what we identify in the face of a "conflicting" or "larger" reality?
In other words, how to manifest beginner's mind?
