In 2018, Charleston newspaper Post and Courier published a five part article focusing on the disparities within South Carolina education. It was entitled “Minimally Adequate”. That phrase has been heard for many years now and is how the education of South Carolina is described. According to Post and Courier, “South Carolina’s constitution...requires only that the Legislature provide a “minimally adequate” education for all”. With South Carolina education being one of the lowest in the country, minimally adequate isn’t good enough. In the 2017-2018 school year, more than half of the students in third grade to eighth grade did not meet the state’s reading and math standards. This number was even higher for black students. More and more high school students are not meeting the requirements of being prepared for most jobs. Not even one student in sixteen schools within the Corridor of Shame took an Advanced Placement class. There is not only educational inequality but environmental racism. South Carolina Superintendent Molly Spearman even said “It is clear that the disparity gap between our high-performing schools and districts and our low-performing continues to widen”. In other words, some students are getting better education just due to where they live. As more and more attention is being brought to the community’s attention, more people have been speaking out about the issue. According to Joe Biden, Charleston’s “standard for schools is minimally, minimally adequate”.Former Vice President and presidential candidate Joe Biden spoke on this issue in July of 2019. At the International Longshoremen’s association hall in Charleston, Biden discussed his plan to better education by providing more funding.
My goal for this piece was to really focus on the phrase that is used to describe education in South Carolina. This particular piece is a neon word collage. Each ‘minimally adequate’ is hand written in a neon paint. The biggest that is in the center is the only one in orange. If you refer back to my first post “SC Corridor of Shame & Teacher Turnover Rates”, the color orange was used to represent shame. The same goes for this piece. It is shameful that this is how our government describes the standard of what our children go through for twelve years. Their education should be described as exceptional, a standard everyone would be proud of.