Reading, Writing and Reform

Two like-minded innovators at the University of Vermont discuss tomorrow

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Fayneese Miller, Dean of the College of EducationIn this conversation with Fayneese Miller, Dean of the College of Education and Josie Herrera, Director of the Women and Minorities in Math and Engineering Program at the University of Vermont, The Green Magazine presents a look at intra-political and extra-cultural implications of educational choices in this country.

tgm: As we near the next election, what is your assessment of education as an issue of concern in Washington?

fm: Both of my parents were civil rights workers. When I was young the Poor People’s March came through my town. Danville, VA was the last capital of the Confederacy and one of the few cities that refused to recognize Martin Luther King’s birthday as a national holiday. It’s also not far from where the first lynching in the u.s. took place. In retrospect I appreciate that my mother got the fire hose and all that stuff. When I was growing up the high school [ I attended ] was not fully desegregated till I was in it. I almost got kicked out of high school. I wrote for The Danville Register & Bee and there was a youth page for which four of us from the high school wrote. Two of us—a white female and me— were writing these articles about the race riots that occurred and how the police were there with dogs. So the white principal called her in and the black principal called me in and said [that] if we continued to write the stories they would expel us.

jh: I understand. As an immigrant, my children are first generation Americans. I came here in the 60s when racism was at its hilt; and when legislation started to come into play with Johnson, the Vietnam War was my primary concern. Kennedy was still in power and I remember sitting in front of tv just crying my eyes out [ when he was assassinated ]. I started my activism during the Vietnam War in 1968. When Columbia students and the Students for a Democratic Society had occupied buildings, I was out there with my camera.