Tamar Lewin Civil Rights Speech Analysis

In his speech Duncan makes some of the same connections that Tamar Lewin makes in his article. They both contended that the fight for an equal opportunity to receive an education, is directly connected to the fight for civil liberties that other disenfranchised groups in America have undertaken. Lewin connected the rights of disable students to workplace discrimination and sexual harassment in the global systems, and Duncan connects the struggle of lerning disabled students in our county to the fight for civil rights of our nation’s black citizens. Duncan comments that’ “It’s a moral issue. I have often said that education is the civil rights issue of our time,” and further adds weight to his argument by stating, “The civil rights protestors on the Edmund Pettus Bridge weren’t in wheelchairs and they weren’t marching on behalf of students with dyslexia, learning disabilities, ADD, or other disabilities. But their spirit and commitment emboldened the disability rights movement,” (Kerszner & Mandell 166). Clearly, Duncan was working to point out that he shared the same sentiment as Lewin, that the rights of
He argues that, “The success of hour students, the well-being of our communities, and the economic prosperity of our nation depend on creating a cradle-to-career educational pipeline…,” and then continues by making an appeal for bipartisan cooperation when he declares, “we can create a education system that delivers a world-class education to every learner. This is a promise we must keep to our nation’s students with disabilities, and to all of America’s children,” (Kirszner & Mandell 170). This reemphasizes Duncan’s original premise that we still have some work to do in preventing prejudice from hindering the promise of an equal opportunity education in our