Diverse Issues In Higher Education Features VIA Website

Dr. Joshua K. Wright, an associate professor of history at Trinity Washington University, wrote an opinion piece for Diverse Issues In Higher Education called "VIA: An Example of Social and Emotional Learning" (Sep 23, 2021). It begins,

Peter G. Murrell, Jr, the late educational psychologist, said: “Education is the practice of assisting people to find agency in, and responsibility for, the struggle for freedom.” The Virginia Interscholastic Association (VIA) embodied that concept.

The article describes the history of the VIA and the collaborative effort to document that history at the VIA website. He concludes,

Everyone knows about the Brown v. Board of Education case, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Rosa Parks. What we do not hear about enough is how, using limited resources under a vicious reign of segregation, Black people continued to work and struggle, encourage and nurture their children to become domestic and global leaders, and literally turn lemons into lemonade.

Dr. Joshua Wright