Where is the outrage?

As educators, one of our defining beliefs is the principle that we do not use the students entrusted in our care as a vehicle for promoting and accomplishing our political agendas. We hold to this core value even when the political agendas we are pursuing involve causes that will better the lives of those young people, such as full funding for child care and schools. 

When communities and families send their young to us to be educated, they trust that we will exercise responsibly the authority given to us as teachers: We do not manipulate young people into political action that they do not fully understand, but educate them so they will one day be prepared to make and act on their own informed choices of political action.

So when Eva Moskowitz and her Harlem Success Academies turned out students and parents to support the closing of district schools at the February meetings of the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, it was shocking to see 5-year-old and 6-year-old children sent to the microphones to speak words they clearly did not understand, put into their mouths by adults who called themselves educators. 

This crass political exploitation of children is actually a consistent behavior of Moskowitz and Harlem Success. Consider the way in which they organize the lottery for their schools as a public exhibition of “winners” and “losers,” maximizing and then displaying for political effect the emotional pain of small children who are passed over and denied spots. 

The admissions lottery required by state law can easily be done — and with much less work — at a small gathering with a few community representatives present to validate the fairness of the process. But such an arrangement would not have produced the heart-tugging event filmed for “Waiting for Superman.”

In their latest exercise in the political exploitation of children, Moskowitz and Harlem Success closed down their schools for part of a school day to get parents and children to attend a demonstration on May 26 against the lawsuit of the NAACP and the UFT which would force the Department of Education to provide support and resources to struggling schools and to end the discriminatory treatment of district schools co-located with Harlem Success academies. For Moskowitz, guaranteeing a good turnout for her demonstration trumped providing a full day’s instruction for students.

Can you imagine the outcry from the editorial pages of the New York Post and the Daily News if New York City public schools were closed for a portion of the day to force parents and children to attend a political demonstration? But in this instance? Silence, deafening silence.