Alexander Russo picks up on some lines from a recent Bill Moyers speech to the Council of Great City Schools in which the television journalist says teachers are routinely abandoned by society (and its elected officials) in persistently crappy schools.

"Teachers now are expected to staff the permanent emergency rooms of our country’s dysfunctional social order," says Moyers in an excerpt from Assorted Stuff (America 101). "They are expected to compensate for what families, communities, and culture fail to do. Like our soldiers in Iraq, they are sent into urban combat zones, on impossible missions, under inhospitable conditions, and then abandoned by politicians and policy makers who have already cut and run, leaving teachers on their own."

When I read it, I found myself nodding my head in agreement, while anxiously asking: but what about the kids we force to attend those same schools? What about the kids who are abandoned by those politicians who could throw them a lifeboat in the short term, and make lifeboats themselves unnecessary in the long term?

So I went back into more of the text from Moyers' speech and was pleased to see that he did scratch at that issue, in ways that please me tremendously.

Moyers suggests that we need to revamp our curriculum to teach urban school kids another R, as in Revolution. He's absolutely right. They need to understand that they don't have to put up with the crap we give them in our worst schools. They need to understand that revolutions aren't passive. They are often nasty, but necessary for change.

Politicians have windows on their homes. Bricks are easy to find. Hear what I'm saying kids?

Being an American means fighting for your due. You don't deserve crappy schools.