Remember when your grandpa would tell you about the bad good old days, when he had to walk ten miles to school in the snow without shoes uphill both ways?  Yeah, well, he ain't got nothing on 16 year old Aubrey Sandifer of Hutto, Texas.  After his school district cut bus services, he has to walk over a mile to school every day. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/us/for-texas-schools-a-year-of-doing-without.html?_r=1&hpw=&pagewanted=all

Over the past two years, Texas has cut over 10,000 teaching jobs, and one district in San Antonio has eliminated 40 special education teaching jobs. 

Once again, the most disadvantaged members of our society are having to bare the burden of the Great Recession.  This should be of special concern for special education teachers, who a) are federally required to provide a free an appropriate education to their students, come Hell or high water, and b) generally serve the most disadvantaged in society, including students with severe disabilities, racial minorities, and students living in severe poverty.  (Of which there seem to be more and more every day!) 

            Last week, I attended a lecture on campus entitled “Liberalism, Self Respect, and the Cultural Aspects of Ghetto Poverty,” delivered by Tommie Shelby, a professor of philosophy and African American Studies at Harvard University.  Shelby discussed several of the challenges that face the so-called “liberal project” of social reform among the black, urban poor, namely that they entail an assumed program of moral reform that seeks to impose itself upon the African American community from without, i.e., from the dominant culture that is different from the culture that it seeks to reform.

            Shelby talked about the individual structures within a community that can or do function as these so-called “programs of moral reform.”  Some of these programs included social work programs, the police, local church organizations, and, of course, schools.  Very briefly, Shelby touched upon the distinction that exists between external programs that attempt to impose moral reformation upon the African American community from without and organic organizations that are formed from within the community that that are controlled and managed by members of the Black community.

            From the perspective of a special education teacher, I am concerned with the integration, collaboration, and cooperation among and between the external structures – as represented by the public schools – and the internal community organizations that have been constructed by community members.  We, as teachers, more often than not fail to reach out and work with these groups.  Included amongst these groups, in Champaign-Urbana, are various Christian youth groups, the Boys and Girls Club of America, and family shelters, as well as “half-and-half” groups, cooperatives formed through alliances between the University of Illinois and local community groups, such as the Education Justice Project and Books2Prisoners.org.