Reply #1: Martha Cothren was right as far as she went - but she didn't go nearly far enough.

[LeftishBrit]

There were other people who helped to earn those children their desks.

Most directly, the people who paid for them. The taxpayers. Republicans and their RW equivalents elsewhere regard it as a patriotic duty to fight for your country (even if they often think it should be someone else's patriotic duty rather than theirs). But oddly enough, they don't seem to regard it as a patriotic duty to pay for one's country. So let all of us, who are fortunate to live in countries with extensive state education, thank the taxpayers who pay for it.

And let us thank the dangerous left-wing politicians (including the centrists and moderate conservatives who would seem left-wing to the likes of Huckabee) who set up and later extended systems of state education. In the UK, state primary education didn't begin till the 19th century; and became universal in the 1870s. Universal state secondary education was established by the 1944 Education Act. I believe that the USA anticipated us in the provision of universal state education. Let the children thank the progressive Americans who ensured this.

Of course, it's not much use having schools if you can't attend them because you're labouring all day. Let us all thank the interfering activists, and the evil trade unions, who ensured that children *could* go and sit on those school desks, instead of spending all day working in fields or mines or factories. Some of these trade unionists suffered imprisonment, even death, to ensure that their descendants would have a right to those school desks. Give a moment to remember and thank them. And let's thank the politicians who set down laws to ensure that no children would have to go out and work instead of attending school. In America, I believe that FDR and his colleagues and supporters had a certain amount to do with this! Eeeevil leftists again.

And I note that this was in Little Rock. The school desks of those children who were not white were earned through the blood of the civil rights activists who dared to defy the right-wing racists, such as another conservative Arkansas governor, Orval Faubus.

The school desks of the little *girls* in the class - and in such classes in many other countries - were earned in part by evil left-wing feminists, who thought that females might deserve a place in society, and the right to pursue their own ambitions. Let us all pause to thank them. And perhaps these girls could also thank America's founding fathers for making sure to establish separation between church and state. Theocracies and girls' advanced education tend not to mix very well.

Yes, there are a lot of people who helped to those desks!