Classes that have participation quizzes that can't be made up (even if the lowest grades are "dropped" or they are extra credit) are ableist and also simply unfair to those who just ran into some bad luck (funeral, family emergency/commitment, sickness)

Just some small ways that the system keeps people down

When we think about social justice, we often think about it in terms of huge, sweeping reforms that happen on a national level: the nation-wide legalization of gay marriage. The end of segregation. Loving v Virginia. Roe v Wade. Many people only vote in federal elections and only keep up with federal politics, thinking that the federal government is what “really matters” when it comes to progress and human rights. 

Federal-level politics and landmark court rulings are important, but oppression often happens in much smaller, less obvious ways. It’s in the fine print of the eligibility criteria for disability benefits. It’s in municipal zoning laws. It’s in bank mortgage eligibility policies. It’s in the enforcement of public park bylaws. The things that make life difficult for marginalized communities often come from local bureaucracy, and look something like this: Disabled people effectively do not have the right to marry. 

In the United States, when a disabled person marries a non-disabled person, they gain a spouse, but they risk losing something immensely important - namely, all of their benefits. Currently, the government assumes that a non-disabled spouse takes full responsibility for all of their disabled spouse’s needs; it becomes their job to provide the disabled spouse with healthcare, housing, basic needs and assistive devices that they require, regardless of their ability to actually afford any of these things. Obviously, this is completely out of the question for most couples. Medical costs for a person with complex needs can be exorbitant, and the average person just cannot provide things like private home health services and out-of-pocket medical expenses for their spouse. 

Unless a disabled person is marrying someone who is independently wealthy, marriage is often out of the question. 

As a result, many disabled people simply have no meaningful access to marriage or the legal benefits and protections it provides. Without a wedding certificate, your partner cannot stay with you in the hospital, access your medical information or make decisions for you while you are incapacitated - something that people with complex medical issues may desperately need their partner to be able to do. International couples may have no means of being able to live in the same country. It may not even be possible for couples to live together at all, as the state may decide that that’s a “common-law” situation and strip away disability benefits even without a formal certificate. The people who are most in need of companionship and legal protection are denied access to it because of cruel and outdated laws that were designed with the false assumption that disabled people cannot desirable partners for non-disabled spouses. 

Domestic violence victims can be evicted for being abused. 

Some cities across America have implemented “nuisance laws” - these are laws originally designed to punish “slum landlords” who don’t try to stop criminal activity or loud parties in their buildings. In cities with nuisance laws, the city tracks how many 911 calls are made to (or about) each address in the city; if an address goes over their yearly limit of 911 calls, the city goes after the property’s landlord, fining them or even threatening them with criminal charges if they don’t make the calls stop. The point of the law is to encourage landlords to keep an eye on their tenants and evict “problem” tenants that disrupt the neighbourhood, and these policies have definitely resulted in a lot of 911-related evictions. And that’s a problem. Because you know who calls 911 a lot? Domestic violence victims. 

These laws have made it so that many people experiencing domestic violence have to choose between “help” and “housing”. If your partner is violently attacking you but your landlord has told you “one more 911 call and you’re out on the streets”, what do you do? How do you navigate such an impossible situation? Many victims simply hold off calling for help unless they’re reasonably certain that their partner is going to kill them, which is incredibly and almost indescribably dangerous, and still results in threats of eviction. Even victims who never call for help themselves can still find themselves out in the cold because of these policies - nuisance laws count any 911 calls made about an address, which means that a well-meaning neighbour calling the cops because they hear screams can cost you your housing. The end result is that an already-vulnerable population are either losing their housing or losing access to lifesaving emergency services, and everyone is worse for it. 

It’s worth noting that these policies also disproportionately affect disabled, elderly and chronically ill people. When you are medically fragile, you tend to have increased medical emergencies and a decreased ability to safely transport yourself to the hospital without an ambulance. So if 80-year-old diabetic woman uses her LifeAlert bracelet to call 911 three times in a year because she’s fallen down or having a hypoglycemic episode, she could face eviction for going over her 911 limit and being a “nuisance” to the city. 

Redlining has shut black people out of wealth-building for decades. How do you build wealth in America? You need credit. If you want to achieve real financial security, you need to convince someone to loan you large amounts of money at a low interest rate so you can use that money to purchase something that will build wealth for you. Let’s say you only have a little bit of money - you go to the bank and convince them to give you a mortgage (which is effectively just a large low-interest loan) so you can purchase a house for yourself. Once you’ve paid off the mortgage and showed the bank how reliable you are, you can go back and ask them for another loan against your house, and use that loan to buy a business, or a second house to rent out for income, or just save your money while your paid-off first house continues to increase in value. When you eventually die, your kids get all the property you amassed with those loans, and they start life in an even better financial position than you did - they can use that property to get even more credit and invest in even more businesses and property. This is how most American families clawed their way into the middle class after the Great Depression - your great-grandfather buying a house in the 1940s is the reason your parents could afford to pay for your college today. 

But there is one group that have been systemically left out of that process for decades, thanks to a practice called “redlining”. 

Banks decide whether or not they are going to loan you money by deciding how much of a “risk” you are. In the 1930s, bankers determined risk by looking at maps of their cities and drawing lines around particular neighbourhoods to determine how much of a risk they were. Bankers would draw red lines around predominantly-black neighbourhoods to signal that people who lived in those neighbourhoods were not eligible for credit - this was done regardless of their income. Poor white neighbourhoods could get loans, but middle-class black neighbourhoods could not. This meant that black people could not improve their situations - they could not afford to move out of cramped black neighbourhoods, they could not get the money to start a business, and they could not afford to renovate their houses to sell them at a profit. They were effectively shut out of opportunities that their white peers were granted. 

Redlining has been illegal for decades, but the cumulative impact of generations of redlining persist to this day. Experts estimate that an average black homeowner today has missed out on $212,023 in personal wealth because of the impacts of redlining.   “Zero-tolerance” policies have harmed marginalized and neurodivergent children without making schools safer. 

If you’ve attended or worked in a grade school in the last 20 years, you’re probably familiar with so-called “zero tolerance” policies. These policies emerged as a result of the 1999 Columbine school shooting, and are pretty much exactly what they sound like - in the wake of Columbine, schools began taking an extremely hardline stance against violence and bullying, assuring worried parents that they would not tolerate even the smallest hint of violence. In schools with zero-tolerance policies in place, punishments are extremely harsh - just about everything will get you suspended at a minimum. Get in a fistfight at school? Doesn’t even matter who started it, everyone involved is suspended. Throwing food? Suspended. Shouting at someone? Suspended. It doesn’t tend to matter if you were joking around or if you'd been pushed to the brink by a student who has bullied you for months - “zero tolerance” means absolutely zero tolerance, and you are suspended. 

But if you ever actually attended a zero-tolerance school, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that these policies don’t actually have any impact on school safety. What they do accomplish is higher rates of school failure and worse overall student outcomes, especially for marginalized students. 

And it makes sense. Which students are the most likely to be acting out in school? Students with ADHD, autism and learning disorders. Students with turbulent home lives. Students in foster care. Students dealing with abuse or trauma. These are the students who need to be in school the most, and need extra support from staff and teachers - instead of getting that support, though, zero-tolerance policies send them away from school for several days at a time, where they are unable to access support and fall further behind their peers. School quickly turns into a vicious cycle; students act out because they’re frustrated, they get suspended, they fall behind in class, which leads to more frustration, which leads to more acting out, which means more suspensions, which puts them further behind, etc, etc. Eventually they become so disillusioned that many of them leave school altogether, putting them at a permanent increased risk of unemployment, poverty, and incarceration.

Parking requirements are making cities unaffordable and unlivable for the poor.

Many cities - like Toronto and Vancouver - have mandatory minimum parking requirements written into their city zoning laws. These policies usually require that all residential buildings have at least one parking space available for every unit of residential housing - if you build a 60-unit apartment building, you need to make sure that you also buy enough land for a 60-stall parking lot or build a 60-space underground parking structure. 

When you think about the reasons that housing is unaffordable, “parking” might not be one of the first things you think of, but these laws have huge impacts on the cost of housing, and they negatively impact both the city itself and the working-class people who live there. Parking spaces are not free, especially in major cities like Toronto where land is at a premium - an above-ground parking space in a city costs an average of $24,000, while a below-ground space costs $34,000. Every unit of residential housing has $24-34k in parking costs tacked onto it - whether the tenant needs a parking space or not - and you can bet that landlords and developers are passing every penny of that cost onto their tenants. 

Parking requirements also decrease the number of units available, which is a problem, because the best way to keep housing affordable is to make sure that you have a lot of it available. A developer who might want to build a 300-unit apartment complex has to factor in the cost of creating at least 300 parking spaces.... so they might scale back to a 100-unit complex instead. Downtown areas that have huge demand for housing and low demand for residential parking are being underutilized because of zoning laws that were created decades ago and no longer reflect today’s reality. Young people, elderly people and urban poor people are increasingly unlikely to own a car, but they are being priced out of walkable neighbourhoods with good public transit for the sake of unwanted parking spaces.

Food safety laws and public property usage laws are making it illegal to feed the homeless. 

“Feeding the homeless” should be one of the most uncontroversial things you can do. Giving food to a person who is hungry is one of the most basic ways that humans care for one another. Everything from cheesy Hallmark movies to the Bible reinforces the importance of giving to others in need. But in dozens of cities across America, you can be fined, arrested or even jailed for giving out food to the homeless. 

Cities use different justifications to shut down or even arrest community service workers for trying to feed the homeless. Some pass increasingly restrictive “food safety laws”, stating that charities are only allowed to give away hot food, or that they are only allowed to give away sealed and individually-packed meals, or that they are only allowed to feed homeless people indoors (something that community organizations like mine do not always have the resources to do). Restrictions continue to get tighter every year in some places, despite the fact that there are virtually zero recorded cases of a homeless person being harmed by food they received from a registered charity. Food safety laws can also force restaurants and stores to destroy their unsold food instead of passing it out; some have to go as far as pouring bleach over the food they throw out in their dumpsters. 

Other cities have used public property bylaws to ban food-sharing on public property, forcing charities to apply for permits to hand out food (which are rarely granted). Justifications for these bylaws vary - some cities give vague excuses about “safety” while others admit that they’re trying to drive homeless people out of their cities - but the end result is the same. Cities are so desperate to be rid of their homeless populations that they’ll criminalize trying to help the homeless, rather than offering stable, affordable housing solutions. 

[ Image description: A screenshot of an online news article titled “New Absentee Rule To Start In Nova Scotia Schools October 1st.” / end of description ]

So Nova Scotia is getting a new policy where grade 10-12 students who miss more than 20% of their classes automatically fail the course, no matter how much work they have completed or what their marks are. Which is completely ableist and ridiculous.

I know multiple people, with high school diplomas, who would not have those diplomas had this rule been in place while they were still in school.

Policies like this specifically hurt students with mental illness, disabilities, chronic illness, and family problems. It’s also more likely to harm lower income students. 

Things like missing a class due to playing on a school sports team, or going on a field trip will not count as these absences, but illness, or the death of a family member will.

If the point of school is to teach students and give them knowledge, then the amount of time missed should hold no bearing on their ability to pass the class. If a student misses a large amount of time, and still manages to complete their work and get good marks in the class, then obviously they care about the class and are more than willing to put in the work considering they’re passing with less help and less access to the material than students who are in class every day. If they don’t show up for school and they don’t do their work, then they will fail regardless of pointless attendance policies like this one.

In addition to failing a course if they miss more than 20% of the classes, students will no longer be able to ask teachers to provide them with missed assignments readings, and will instead need to ask their principal to request it. Which again, does not make it any easier for the student to catch up, it actually creates more obstacles. 

None of these policies will actually help students who are most in need of help. They just punish students who may be missing school due to their health and probably already feel bad about it. Because again, students who simply don’t care would not be too likely to be putting in the effort to complete assignments and get passing grades in classes they’re not attending. What would actually be helpful would be to put policies in place that benefit students who miss large chunks of class time, by making it easier to obtain missed work and giving them resources to find the material that was taught in class. That way, if a student is sick, or can’t make it into school, they have a higher possibility of actually learning what they missed, which I was under the impression was the purpose of school.

Hi! I've followed you for a while and you always seem to have really helpful tips and answers to questions about writing characters, so I was wondering if you could help me. I'm writing a character who's a pathological liar, and I was wondering if you had any advice for writing him.

Good question!  Compulsive liars tend to be born from: 

A) childhood abuse or very strict parents that forced them to lie in order to avoid punishment, leading to a cycle of dishonesty that’s difficult to break, and/or: 

B) a personality disorder such as narcissistic personality disorder or antisocial personality disorder.  

Either way, compulsive liars are telling lies to preserve themselves, to get attention, and/or to convey a certain version of themselves to the world.

More “sinister” and organized pathological liars will study the person they wish to deceive, look for weaknesses subconsciously or otherwise that they can exploit on.  

Some lack empathy, and some have an excess amount of it (which often enables them to lie better.)  More empathetic liars will often feel guilty for lying and relieved once you stop asking questions on the subject, whereas less empathetic liars (often on the sociopathy spectrum) can comfortably lie for long periods of time.  These less empathetic liars will often feel little-to-no discomfort or shame after having been caught in a lie, and will often try to use another lie to cover it.

There’s an article containing the confessions of pathological liars and real-life accounts of people’s attempts to confront the pathological liars in their lives here.

Here’s one account of a man’s marriage with a manipulative, sociopathic pathological liar:

I married a sociopath. Of course, I didn’t realize that there were those types of human beings in existence. Near the end of our 2 yr. marriage is when I started realizing she had been lying to me & her coworkers (destroying my character) so that she could attempt to have me arrested on false DV charges. Imagine the realization of this from your spouse. I guess she was through with me, so this was her way of disposing of me. I found out later after meeting her ex that she had succeeded in having him arrested on false DV charges (they didn’t stick, because, well, they were false!) He is a really nice man.

I found out some incredulous lies, some just downright crazy, and some directed solely to destroy my character. When I confronted her with several of these lies she would lie again to cover, or simply state "you weren’t there", etc. The problem is that I spoke with people who were there in the certain instances. My take on it is that one could confront a person such as my ex (who is a validated sociopath ~ by way of psychological testing) until one’s death and not accomplish anything positive. I’ll agree with the one thing that another person stated: When confronted with the truth, there is a long silence.

I have to deal with this person with outrageously horrible behavior because I had children by her. The interesting thing is that she didn’t really "target to destroy" me until she was underway with the second pregnancy. Once I got my feet under me, and started investigating I uncovered lie after lie concerning her parents, my parents, me, my friends, you name it. Nothing was sacred from being destroyed by her lying. I uncovered an affair she had also.

From this experience I may be an incurable cynic on the topic of rehabilitation from chronic lying.

Truth and trust are missing from a liar’s dictionary, and it can’t be penciled in later. My ex uses lies to manipulate people into believing a certain thing or making people act (usually it’s for punitive control, getting what she wants regardless of others, etc.).

Here’s one from the child of pathological liars:

I am pretty sure both of my parents are compulsive liars. My father has been audited several times by the IRS, denied stealing money from me when I was a working teen, and encouraged us kids to lie about his affair -we met his mistress when we were preteens. I think my mom enables his behavior or is a compulsive liar, too. The most significant evidence of their behavior is this: neither my mom not dad will admit that they believe I was raped. After our alcoholic bi-polar brother died in 2004, my older sister spilled the beans that I was raped at camp in 1980 when I was 16. My sister said our brother started drinking because I was raped at camp. No evidence exists to support any rape. My parents use this mythical rape to explain why I spent almost 3 months in a mental health care facility. I am 45 years old now. I found about this horrible lie in 2004—now I understand why my entire family treated me in such a bizarre way. Compulsive lying must be just a small part of mental illness. I am bi-polar and am having success with medical and counseling, but two years ago this chemical imbalance almost cost me my husband and 2 children. I am still praying for wisdom on how to treat my parents who are 75 and 78 and very ill. I know Jesus will give me wisdom and strength to continue loving and respecting my parents and help me not to be a victim of them. Their big lie about me has definitely tainted many relationships in my life.

And one that shows how a pathological liar can be born out of the unrealistic expectations of parents:

I can also understand why a compulsive liar lies. Mainly because I have recently discovered I am one. I truly don’t know why I lie, but I have read the symptoms and I concur that I lie to protect myself. I grew up in a middle class family. I was basically the star student in my earlier grades (1st through 3rd) and mt parents never really let me forget it. I actually began to slack in school a bit, and thats my fault. But as soon as I received my first B my parents grounded me for a long time. (I do remember this.) And from there on they continued to make sure my homework was always done and would never let me leave the house until it was done.

I think that’s when it all started...I began to lie to my parents and tell them my homework was done so I could go play with friends sooner. I’m not sure how but, I as time went on I lied more and more. I, actually to the point where I can lie to myself and believe in false things. I tell my parents that they tell me things, or that they don’t tell me things to get out of a sticky situation so I’m not punished. I do it to everyone now because I’m always afraid of the punishment. I am currently in a great relationship that is slowly slipping away. I truly mean no harm to anyone but my girlfriend is amazing...I don’t know how she puts up with me. I lie about the littlest things. Their family is on vacation and I forgot to mow their lawn...and I was talking to her, I told her that I mowed it...when I didn’t yet, but she didn’t even come home for another week so there was not point in lying.

I am currently seeing help and I advise all those that know a compulsive liar to help them. Because its hard and self-confusing. It’s instinct to lie for us, and it feels weird when I tell the truth...

It’s important to know that not all pathological liars are malicious or bad people.  Some of them are using it as a survival strategy, not a means of abuse.   That said, there are pathological liars who genuinely are abusive and harmful to the people around them, who should be avoided as much as possible (but can be very interesting to write.)

I hope this helps, and happy writing!

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Melissa Wu, who has served as the organization’s chief program officer since last year, will become CEO effective June 15. Morgan founded Education Pioneers in 2003 after serving as legal counsel at Aspire Public Schools, a charter school network with campuses in California and Tennessee. A former teacher and attorney, Morgan said he recognized at Aspire a benefit to building leaders by bringing together diverse candidates with backgrounds in education and business. More than a decade later, the organization he founded has trained nearly 4,000 education leaders through its fellowship programs focused on education leadership. Although fellows typically have professional training outside education, most go on to work in the field, in areas including data analysis, operations, finance, and human resources. As the Oakland, California–based nonprofit approaches its 15th anniversary, Morgan said he reflected on Education Pioneers’ “core values,” which say one person or idea alone cannot solve the complex challenges public education is up against. Stepping back to look at the organization’s next chapter, he discovered it could benefit from a leader with different skills and a new perspective. “Our fundamental belief at Education Pioneers is about the power of people, and I truly believe that in education the most important question we’re answering is not the question about what, it’s the question about who,” said Morgan, who is still exploring opportunities for the next step in his career. “I always hoped, ever since the earliest years, that I would be the type of founder who could step down from the CEO role when the time was right for the organization, and the time is right.” Wu came to Education Pioneers in 2017 after more than six years at TNTP, a national education nonprofit that recruits and trains teachers. Wu began her career at the TEAK Fellowship, a New York City–based after-school program that helps students from low-income families get into and succeed at top high schools. She previously hosted Education Pioneers fellows on her team at TNTP, she said, which helped motivate her decision to join the organization. “[Education Pioneers] has built this strong network and this large body of alums who are doing incredible work in the field, so it felt like an exciting moment to me to both think about how you sustain that momentum, sustain it with real quality, and to think about what the next phase would look like,” Wu said. Education Pioneers began with a class of nine fellows working at seven education organizations, but it now trains nearly 400 education leaders per year. The nonprofit has partnered with more than 750 organizations across the country. Education Pioneers offers a 10-week summer fellowship program, composed predominantly of graduate school students, and a 10-month impact fellowship, in which emerging leaders are recruited and placed with education organizations to focus on data and analytics and strategic project management. School districts and charter school networks make up more than half of partnerships, but the group also places fellows at state education departments and other education nonprofits. Among Education Pioneers alumni, 53 percent identify as leaders of color, though the group has put a greater emphasis on diversity in recent years, Wu said. “We recognize that we need leadership in education that reflects the really diverse communities that we’re serving,” Wu said. “We have a very deep and strong commitment to equitable outcomes for kids and excellent outcomes for kids, but also diversity, equity, and inclusion in how the sector is being led.” As the network of Education Pioneers alumni continues to grow, Wu said she plans as CEO to further engage the network of leaders who got their start through the fellowship program. Beyond recruiting, selecting, and training education leaders, the next phase at Education Pioneers will focus on alumni outreach and “how we mobilize and catalyze those people over time throughout their careers.” As Morgan transitions out of the job, he offered optimism as Wu takes the helm. “This work is people-powered at the end of the day, and we need thousands of more exceptional, diverse leaders driving this important work advancing equity and excellence,” he said. “This work is more important than ever for our nation, and I’m just incredibly excited for the next chapter under Melissa’s leadership at Education Pioneers.” Disclosure: Education Pioneers and The 74 receive financial support from The Walton Family Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. 74 Senior Editor Andrew Rotherham serves on Education Pioneers’ Washington, D.C.–area advisory board. 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