She’s 19 and just finished law school. Now she wants to fix the U.S. education system

Tale Transcript

Haley Taylor Schlitz wants to change a system that tried to hold her back. The 19-yr-aged will be the youngest person to graduate from the Dedman University of Regulation at Southern Methodist College (SMU), a non-public school in University Park, Texas.

According to analysis performed by her family members, she is also the youngest Black pupil to graduate from any law university in the United States. Now she wants to use that education and her own individual encounters to reform the public university program. 

“All school quality, of course, need to be equal due to the fact we want all of our pupils and all of our future generation to get a terrific schooling and move our region forward,” Schlitz explained to As It Happens guest host Helen Mann.

“What we are not able to do is have part of our state transferring forward and component of it not ready to due to the fact of the schooling that they ended up offered, centered on definitely very little.”

Taylor Schlitz is established to graduate on May well 13, but she experienced to struggle and inevitably go away the Texas public education system to do it. 

Racism in the classroom

Increasing up, Taylor Schlitz’s mother thought her daughter excelled as a scholar, and required to get her into lessons for gifted college students. But the college refused and even mentioned potentially keeping her again to repeat a quality. 

Major up to that, Taylor Schlitz said she skilled racism and micro-aggressions in the classroom. Throughout a college perform known as “Northern Aggression”, as the only Black person in the class, she was forged as the only Black slave in the creation.

“My dad and mom dropped it and they have been like, completely not. So they moved me to the Northern family members as the abolitionist. So I guess it is really far better, query mark? But I am not truly certain why they made a decision to do this in the very first spot. It was a awful concept,” claimed Taylor Schlitz. 

She also recalled classmates making racist feedback to her in class.

“The other college students would seem above at me and say: ‘If we lived back in that time, I would possess you.’ And of course, as a 10-yr-previous girl, what do you say to that?” she said.

So at Quality 5, Taylor Schlitz’s mother pulled her out of school and started off homeschooling her.

“She’s like, you will find no way I can do worse than this, and pulled me out,” explained Taylor Schlitz. 

When homeschooling, Taylor Schlitz suggests she was equipped to concentration on her weaknesses to grow to be a perfectly-rounded college student. She suggests the set up also allowed her to boost skills this sort of as time administration and self-accountability.

And she soared. By 13, she had concluded all the needs she necessary to complete higher school. By 16 she had finished her undergraduate diploma in schooling at Texas Woman’s College.

Now she’s graduating from Southern Methodist College at 19. The CBC reached out to SMU for comment.

Bringing modify

Even soon after powering through school, Schlitz is far from finished. She’s going to spend the summer time researching for the bar exam, and then she wishes to pursue a profession in educational plan. 

“Some of the largest troubles that I see in public educational facilities, precisely relating to gifted and proficient, dual enrolment, AP and honour courses… is fairness and access. There is genuinely not a lot of diversity in those applications,” explained Taylor Schlitz.

“I must be in a position to be a regulation school graduate at 19, even if I stayed in the public faculty program, and I would not have been ready to. Absolutely not.”

She suggests that if she experienced stayed in the community university program, she may perhaps have been in a position to skip a quality or two, but very likely wouldn’t have even started off regulation university at this issue.

And she has a number of different routes she’s thinking about, including performing for an elected formal, non-income, school district, education legislation firm, or teaching.

She feels there are two techniques to influence the education and learning program.

“1 is from inside of the method, becoming a teacher of colour, remaining that superior impact, generating that environment of very good understanding for the students. And a single is from outside the process, becoming any person who variations the nuts and bolts and basis of the academic technique,” she mentioned. 

“I really feel called to training, but I would also adore to provide the community in any way that I can and truly modify the instructional system.”

Created by Philip Drost. Produced by Kate McGillivray.