The Washington Post notes that some schools use the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday as a rare opportunity to teach something that isn’t related to the federally-mandated testing that drives so much of the curriculum in public schools. I suppose it’s inevitable that most people will view holidays like MLK Day as not much more than a day off from school or work, but it’s somewhat reassuring to know that teachers are taking it upon themselves to give students a historical context for the notation on the calendar.
I find these words of Dr. King, delivered in a speech on April 4, 1967, to be especially poignant in light of Bush’s recent proposal to escalate our presence in Iraq:
If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind
and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in
Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam
immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to
see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to
play.
The world now demands a maturity of America that we
may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been
wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been
detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one
in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In
order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the
initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war….
