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At the 2012 Republican Convention in prime time, Dr. Condoleezza Rice gave a brilliant speech.  Thirteen minutes into her 19 minute speech, and arguably an aside, she commented that the crisis in education K-12 is a threat to who we are. And after her promotion of choice (read charter and voucher), she uttered the words that have caused many tweets and blogs:  “This {education} is the civil rights issue of our day.”

I certainly don’t know what Dr. Rice meant by civil rights but the history of “Civil Rights” began shortly after the US Constitution was signed because Americans recognized what inequalities could ensue if tyranny reared its ugly head as it had in England. This recognition was called the Bill of Rights, but just as easily could have been called the Bill of individual citizens’ Rights, albeit White male citizens.

Subsequent amendments to the Constitution also questioned the wisdom of the revered founding fathers and the government.  Amendment 13, definitely a civil right, freed slaves.  Amendment 14, followed to give the recently freed slaves “full” citizenship, a civil right. Then the male leaders recognized that half the population did not have a basic civil right and amended the Constitution by giving women the right to vote in the 19^th.  After much struggle, Amendment 23 gave the civil right of citizenship to Washington D. C. residents.  And finally, the 24^th amendment recognized that all people are not socio-economically equal and amended the Constitution to prohibit charging money for voting. 

All these were civil rights that the Congress and the states passed in order to secure a more perfect union and provide equality to those who were not originally granted equality by the Founding Fathers and the Constitution. These amendments put governments on notice that tyranny would not be tolerated.  So is education the civil rights issue of the day?  What do you think?  Do we need an amendment to the constitution to stop the tyranny of big money running the education agenda? Education is the civil rights issue of the day, but what do we do about it to start the civil rights movement?