“Leaving the world better than we saw it:” Imperatives for general and special educators

Abstract

Abstract The United States and our world have been witnessing tremendous changes at socio-economic, political, and educational levels. Some of these changes have been fantastic and some have been depressing. For example, many of our fellow citizens are still enduring discriminations, victimizations, prejudices, and inaccurate expectations because of their race, skin color, language, national origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and values, to mention a few. These are evidenced in recent marches, protests, and agitations led by the “Black Lives Matter” movement to tackle increased police harassments, brutalities, shootings, and killings of Blacks, especially Black males. There are apparent disruptions, anxieties, frustrations, and deliberations about the kind of world that we are living in and the kind of world that we are leaving behind for our future generations. The critical questions are, Are we really “leaving the world better than we saw it?” What can general and special educators do to “leave the world better than they saw it?” This article responds to these questions.