Honor MLK By Going to Work or School

My favorite puppy training paper, the Beaver County Times, reported that two local school districts were forced to schedule classes for today.  Their students would have been off for Martin Luther King day but recent school cancellations due to bad weather necessitated a make-up day.  The article was fairly innocuous –  it merely mentioned that classes would be in session for the affected students, why scheduling the extra day was necessary, and some nobody’s reaction, the relevance of  who’s opinion I couldn’t discern.

What was interesting were the readers’ responses.  The first commenter was most indicative of the muddled thought that passes for logic in this area.   Wrote someone using the nom de plume jackbauerfjr, “Way to go Beaver and Hopewell School Districts!!! You are racist!!!!!!! Like you guys couldn’t add a day of school at the end of the year!!!!”  Aside from the fact that he must have stopped at the local Dollar General when they had a sale on exclamation marks jackbauerfjr seems to believe that only the worst bigot would consider forcing students to attend class on a day ostensibly set aside to honor the Reverend Dr. King.  And while King would have preferred that his legacy be the uniting of all Americans the subsequent comments devolved into a slinging of racial demagoguery.  Personally, I believe King would rather have seen all students in school.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. — Martin Luther King, I Have A Dream

Dr. King alluded to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in this the second sentence of his famous oration.  Interesting that Lincoln, whom we once honored with a holiday celebrating his birthday, no longer has such an honor bestowed upon him. We instead lump his and George Washington’s birthdays into a collective “President’s Day.”  King has his own day.   But quite frankly MLK Day, President’s Day, and a number of other -Days were invented solely to bestow extra Mondays off upon bank and government employees and some lucky union members who’ve negotiated the same.

Let’s be honest.  If it’s our intent to honor Dr. King and his ultimate sacrifice for the cause of equality,  giving school students a day to lounge around the house, play PS3, hang at the mall, and post to Facebook is a poor means to do so.  In the Times article Hopewell Area Superintendent Charles Reinawas was quoted, “I would imagine that, in the classrooms, people will honor Martin Luther King Day.”

I suspect a single minute spent discussing King in the Hopewell and Beaver classrooms will be one minute more than those at home will devote to him.  They’d all be better off in school.

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