Global Status Elevation in Today’s Classroom

The Way We Were (And Are)

In 1974 The Equal Education Opportunities Act, reaffirming equal education for all, and in the same year Lau. V. Nichols, demonstrated that the 14^th amendment applied to language being tied to national origin discrimination. This was a landmark time for many born in America and others who had more recently immigrated to the United States. While discrimination in the classroom gained attention and started a slow path to dissolving, it still remains prevalent in the today. Some of the concerns of the 1970s have remained—that too often marginalized students are not afforded the same educational opportunities as others. With a growing immigrant population, other concerns over discrimination based on language, culture, and socioeconomics have gained recent attention. Hopefully, if you are reading this book a decade or more after the copyright of this publication, the need for such a chapter on status elevation for students will be dated, and you will be able to look back at how far we have come in elevating the status of marginalized people. Until such a time, there remains the need for educating students of all ages on the necessities and merits of recognizing the value of all people for their personal merits as well as the value of interchanges between others as an aide for self edification.