Back to School - the End of Summer 2016

My two pre-teen sons, along with another 50,000 students in the District of Columbia Public Schools(DCPS) system, returned to school today, thus signaling the end of summer 2016 and the beginning of school year 2016-17. 

While early jitters connected to logistics, new environments and new friends will fade soon, our children are fortunate to have restarted school and they are blessed to be able to continue along a familiar path that many have grown to know, to expect and to desire as a rite of human growth and development. All of our children are privileged to travel this route.

However, across the seas and onto the lands of strife and crises, tens of thousands of children continue to have the rites to adulthood and personal development interrupted by conflict. Many children will miss school this year. Some children will be forced to forego school and to pick up arms instead of pencils and books. Some girls will be barred from classrooms assembled by boys and be pressed into domestic servitude within their homes in lieu of academic study. These are the hindrances to humanity  - the stumbling blocks to all children having the opportunity to reaching their fullest potentials.

Therefore, as many children return to school and tens of thousands of others are denied that honor and right, humanity must continue to hold dearly the ideals that all children are deserving of an education. With youth as the vanguard of all beneficial changes to society, it remains the utmost responsibility of all communities to school and to educate all of our boys and girls.