U.S. Court: Detroit students have no right to access to literacy

shituationist:

The lawsuit took pains to illustrate how Detroit’s schools — run
under a state-appointed emergency manager — were a welter of
dysfunction: overcrowded classrooms, lack of textbooks and basic
materials, unqualified staff, leaking roofs, broken windows, black mold,
contaminated drinking water, rodents, no pens, no paper, no toilet
paper, and unsafe temperatures that had classes canceled due to
90-degree heat or classrooms so cold students could see their breath.

At times, without teachers or instructional materials, students were
simply herded into rooms and asked to watch videos. One student claimed
to have learned all the words to the film Frozen in high
school. The lawsuit even mentions one eighth grade student who “taught” a
seventh and eighth grade math class for a month because no teacher
could be found.

We had described such teaching methods as a sort of “throw a book at
them and hope they learn something” method of education — only without
the book to throw. Student cannot be expected to learn when they are
simply “warehoused for seven hours a day” in “an unsafe, degrading, and
chaotic environment” that is a school “in name only.” It is hardly
surprising that, at the plaintiff’s schools, which serve almost
exclusively low-income children of color, almost 99 percent of the
students are unable to achieve proficiency in state-mandated subjects.

Last year, the state moved for dismissal, arguing that the 14th Amendment contains no reference to literacy.

Then, last week, U.S. District Judge Stephen Murphy III agreed with the state.

Literacy is important, the judge noted. But students enjoy no right
to access to being taught literacy. All the state has to do is make sure
schools run. If they are unable to educate their students, that’s a
shame, but court rulings have not established that “access to literacy”
is “a fundamental right.”

At the close of last year’s story, one of the plaintiffs in the
case, Jamarria Hall, had reflected on his experiences at Detroit’s
Osborn High School and described the institution as a “crab barrel” —
where you can’t escape because you keep getting pulled, or pushed, back
in.

He had said the state was one of those forces pushing any crabs who’d
escape back in. “‘Cause, starting out, they’re the ones at the top of
the barrel.”

Apparently, we may add the U.S. government to those pushing crabs back in their barrel.

U.S. Court: Detroit students have no right to access to literacy