Tags
Chana Joffe-Walt, Ira Glass, Private School Education, Public School Education, This American Life
Three Miles
There’s a program that brings together kids from two schools. One school is public and in the United States’ poorest congressional district. The other is private and costs $43,000/year. They are three miles apart.
The hope is that kids connect, but some of the public school kids just can’t get over the divide. We hear what happens when you get to see the other side and it looks a lot better.
The podcast is audio only and comes in two complementary halves of about 20 minutes.
ED- I’d very much like our patrons to hear this first and then I’ll write my lived experience – this time in Australia – but at a time when education was far more than just preparing young minds for a job and a life on the treadmill.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
The one thing that stuck me was that the narrative was about the kids from the poor schools but little about the kids from the $43k school. The kids from the poor school has dreams and aspirations but when an opportunity came there way it might as well have come in a foreign language; a lack of tools on how to deal with it and though not stated the mental health issues that came with those opportunity. It was almost that disadvantage was almost hard wired into them.
Is our education system any different here, I don’t know. I here parents sending their children to private schools here, for things like the pastoral care etc which has me reaching for the bullshit button, the reality they have this false attitude of keeping their kids away from the riff raff. I might add that it’s almost universally the attitude that kids go to university in this area. Its also bizarre given that the public high schools have better results than the corresponding private schools local to here.
I might expand on other experiences later.
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Who is the Ed. above.
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I cannot tell a lie, Viv. The comment was mine.
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I look forward to reading about your school days.
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Not enjoying it – not engaging me. With vision is might come to life. I don’t think the narrative flows or makes enough sense. Sorry.
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It was very eye opening! The haves and have nots, once again.
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I will listen but later.
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