When the Rules Are Fair, But the Game Isn't (Public Education‪)‬

Fifty years and more than two generations after a court ruling (Brown v. Board of Education) that called for making education equal, public education remains largely unequal. Since the Brown decision changed the rules to include everyone in education, the common assumption now is that the "game" is fair and equal. Is it? Although the rules now provide for equal opportunity, the actual "game" of education is far from equal. The situation of desegregation without meaningful integration has created a deeper race crisis. Teachers and administrators view the educational situation today, and the race crisis, with some kind of blinders or at least with one-dimensional vision. We propose a simple game activity that has been tried for three years in graduate diversity courses to help educators perceive another dimension, the historical and cumulative social dimension, to the crisis in education.