The Stand in the Schoolhouse Door by Pam Allyn

Today, January 21, I am joining with One Million Moms for Gun Control to walk in a rally to call attention to the need to create a safer, nonviolent world for children.

— Pam Allyn, literacy and education expert and advocate

©2013 by Pam Allyn, The Huffington Post

Today, on Martin Luther King Day, we honor the passing on Thursday of a civil rights hero, James A. Hood, who integrated the University of Alabama in 1963 together with a fellow student Vivian Malone. This seminal moment when they entered the university to defend civil rights became known as the “stand in the schoolhouse door”.

All around the world, every day, the school bell rings. Children come into their classrooms, and seek the smile of their teacher, ready for the promise of a new day, to learn to read, write, think and grow. We hold these images as metaphors for the precious rights that belong to all children, as a symbol of our democracy which provides sanctuary for our children to become who they want to be, to dream dreams that can be fulfilled by their education.

And yet, on the dread day in Newtown, this promise was not fulfilled, not for the children there, nor for their beloved and heroic teachers and principal. Time will not ease that pain, nor minimize that tragedy. But we can do whatever is humanly possible to ensure nothing like this ever happens again.

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