Last Saturday, I participated in a memorial service celebrating the life of a great teacher and good friend, Dr. Kenneth Jernigan. Dr. Jernigan was a leader in the National Federation of the Blind for more than 45 years. While I shared my recollections of this great man with hundreds of his friends and family, my personal sense of loss was balanced by my deep respect for the values for which Kenneth Jernigan stood throughout his life.

Dr. Jernigan consistently dedicated his life to the advancement of human rights. He and I shared the conviction that all people have value. Our own life experiences had taught us that - when given the opportunity to contribute to our communities - each of us has the ability to make a difference in the lives of others.

Dr. Jernigan always made the point that helping people join the mainstream of America is an investment in our future, not charity. His work for the National Federation of the Blind balanced traditional civil rights advocacy with practical, community-based programs which were clearly directed toward developing and supporting the abilities of blind Americans.

In my remarks to the memorial gathering, I recalled that Dr. Kenneth Jernigan did not limit his advocacy to uplifting the lives of blind people. He was deeply concerned about the human rights of all people, especially the rights of children in our community.

Later, as I drove home from the service, I was thinking about our children and the problems we confront in our local schools. I thought about Kenneth Jernigan’s observation that we all gain from our investment in the human potential of this country; and I thought about the educational and skill development programs which are essential elements of the NFB's strategy to include all blind people in the everyday life of America.

I believe that we can apply Dr. Jernigan's human rights vision and the practical NFB strategy of inclusion to our efforts to achieve equal educational opportunity for all American children. All of us who care about children must be clear that our national debate about educational opportunity is a human rights struggle which must be won in Washington, as well as in our neighborhoods.

Those in Washington who would frame this debate about educational opportunity in terms of local (as opposed to federal) control fail to address two realities confronting American children.

The first reality is the concentration of our nation's wealth in the hands of a small percentage of our wealthiest citizens. That disparity in wealth effectively precludes many American communities in urban and rural areas from financing quality public education exclusively from their local property taxes.

The second and equally important reality is this: local control of our school children's education is not only desirable, it is psychologically unavoidable. Concerned parents and compassionate communities necessarily will remain the primary and essential guardians of healthy, well-educated children.

As Dr. James P. Comer of Yale has observed, "Children are in a powerless state in which knowledge and security come from people to whom they are strongly attached. It takes an unusual effort for a child to be different from the surrounding people and culture. For these reasons, immediate networks greatly affect the future performance of the developing child."

The continuing control of our children’s education by parents and local schools is not in doubt. What does remain in question is whether poor families, and the school systems which are struggling to serve them, will receive the public financial support required to give every child the world-class education she or he deserves.

Increased federal support for education is both warranted and long overdue. For the last 50 years, local jurisdictions in this country have failed to adequately invest in the only legal doorway to opportunity for poor people - a decent public education. The lack of equal educational opportunity in America remains a human rights issue of the first order.

By a large margin, Americans who contact my office favor increased federal aid to local education, especially when the terms for receiving that federal aid acknowledge the importance of locally-controlled schools. In growing numbers, moreover, Americans are synchronizing their conduct with their conscience by becoming personally involved in the education of children in their own communities.

Dr. Kenneth Jernigan would approve of this growing human rights movement for our children, especially the love and attention each of us can give to the children in our community.