In "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King Jr. addressed his fellow religious leaders concerning the charge of "extremism" they had leveled at him. He wrote:
Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?
Dr. King's call for the need to be "creative extremists" is especially timely in the current climate of education reform, a climate allegedly concerned with education yet in many ways hostile to it. An important lesson I've learned from my many years in education is that teaching is much more than an individual endeavor that brings personal fulfillment; it is above all a social, political, and ethical commitment to young people and to our society's unrealized ideals of fair play and justice. It is in this context that Dr. King's words make more sense than ever, reminding us that being creative extremists for equity in education is a worthy pursuit.
Although in our nation all children are promised an equal and high quality education regardless of station or rank, our educational history is brimming with examples of grossly uneven access and outcomes, often based precisely on students' race and social class. Academic success has been elusive for large numbers of young people who are economically poor or culturally and racially different from the majority. Thus, although an equal education is the birthright of all children, it is a myth for far too many of them.
When young people are denied an equal education simply because of the zip code in which they happen to reside; or when they attend schools with crumbling infrastructures and uncaring educators; or when they face racism and other biases; or when their abilities are doubted: in these cases, we need to be creative extremists to work on their behalf. We also need to be creative extremists on behalf of caring and committed teachers whose work is becoming intolerable because of the growing obsession with test scores and accountability and the diminishing attention to real standards and actual teaching. And we need to be creative extremists on behalf of families, especially those that have little power, in their quest for the education their children deserve.