As protests continue weeks after Michael Brown was shot, it seems that everyone is talking about Ferguson — except students on the other side of the Mississippi. Middle and high school teachers at Edwardsville School District in Illinois were told to avoid the topic, and if inquisitive students brought it up, to “change the subject and re-focus the students.”

Since the shooting death of Black teen Michael Brown and subsequent protests, media from around the world have convened on the area, bringing national and international attention to issues of segregation, police diversity, socioeconomic inequality and injustice in America.

Administrators at the school district said that they banned discussions because some teachers were inserting their own opinions into the conversation, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. To avoid parental concern, the administration of the majority-white school district decided to avoid attention to what was happening in an majority-Black area that's just a 30-minute drive away.

Critics of the district’s decision argued that ignoring issues of racism and segregation are precisely what created tensions in Ferguson, where 95 percent of the police force is white. Rather than listening to community concerns, police have responded by militarizing their forces, silencing media, meeting protesters with tear gas and rubber bullets, instituting a curfew and bringing in the National Guard.

Others pointed out that children in Ferguson are forced to live the reality of inequality and injustice every day, while those across the river in more affluent suburbs have the privilege of ignoring that reality and carrying on with their school day.