Important lessons not handed down

To the Editor:

After five days of back-to-school sub-teaching 7th-grade social science and humanities at my favorite “high needs” middle school, the most profound takeaway was regarding racism. I shared how my all-white swimming pool where I lifeguarded for four summers was segregated and my Alabama high school integrated in 1967. I asked the diverse classroom “What do segregation and integration mean?” No answers.

Is it good or bad that no Colorado student knew the definitions that my childhood environment, led by the late Gov. George C. Wallace, taught me?

— Mike Sawyer

Denver