This conversation comes at an interesting time for me. In the United States the devide between public (state) and private schooling is very complicated, as there is unequal funding for state run schools in the same cities. In the poorest neighborhoods the schools which need the most aid, get the least. And, most of the over two million people we now have in the bigest prison population had to go to, well just guess which school. So school is the first culling out in the system which leads to opportunity or jail.
We Quakers did not use sugar or cotton during slave days. Our prison system is getting to look more and more like the slave system as it is privatized and even used for strike breaking. Here is the delema. We maintain private schools, some of which, many of which, are too expensive for Quakers to go to even with some financial aid. So, are we taking part in a similar unfairness similar to those who bought goods which supported American slavery.
I am happy to report that the New York Quarterly meeting is not sleeping on this question. The delema is that as long as American schools are segrigated into haves and can't ever gets, we can only be working towards justice, and not living justice. We provide a large number of scholarships, and yet we feel we must do more. We are holding workshops on making Quaker schools more Quaker, and egalitarinanism is a big coming part of that struggle.
No answer as yet.
Cheers
Larry