I’ve been swamped with hiring a contractor for a home renovation – finally fixing up The Hovel! - and my various political activities but I do manage take long walks along Lake Michigan, still. Isn’t it gorgeous at night?
You-all may have missed this. Briefly, Nikole Hannah Jones wrote a piece for the NYTimes where she reveals that she sent her daughter to a lower rated NYC public school (when she could afford a private school) because Jones believed that her daughter should attend the school the other black children in her neighborhood attend. Her daughter, now 16, resents the decision her parents made and believe they should have found her a better school.
Nikole Hannah Jones is hated by the Right (and lots of Right leaning “liberals”) because she created The 1619 Project, which is a set of essays on the historical role of African Americans in the US. White people freaked out, because how dare she occupy space in the NYTimes when they’re entitled to that space and how dare she center US history on black people. So this confessional essay about public schools was fucking catnip to these people who hate her, and they all used the honesty of the essay (that none of them would ever have the spine to write) to crow that they were right and she was wrong about public schools
My own take on the essay is it was very brave of Jones to write it and while it does point to real problems in public schools particularly for children who are racial minorities, it also comes from a 16 year old, and 16 year olds blame their parents for all sorts of things. I’d check back in with Jone’s daughter when she’s 20.
My favorite Leftist education writer, Jennifer Berkshire, jumped off the HNJ controversy to ask this:
Full disclosure: I am a huge Zohran Mamdani fan. But I have been deeply frustrated by his administration’s lack of a vision for what is not only the nation’s largest school district, but the largest entity, by cost and headcount, under the mayor’s control. “What’s Mamdani’s agenda for K-12 education in NYC?” asked the education news site Chalkbeat recently, concluding that after six months, it was hard to say. Analyzing every press release released by the administration, Chalkbeat noted that just 11 had anything to do with the city’s schools. More recently, Mamdani announced a one-year ban on AI in elementary and middle schools in NYC—a smart move, given the parent-powered grassroots revolt against ed tech. But whereas we know the mayor’s views on, say, housing or worker power, his vision for public schools in the city remains largely mysterious.
It’s not just Zo, as the New York Post likes to refer to him. The DSA platform barely touches on public education. The “thriving working class communities” the group envisions apparently don’t include schools. And with the exception of a handful of notables—Francesca Hong in Wisconsin, Angie Nixon in Florida and David Morales in Providence, RI to name a few—the candidates running under the DSA banner don’t mention K-12 education. Nithya Raman, the DSA candidate who will likely be the next mayor of Los Angeles, identifies 11 priority issues on her website. Animal welfare makes the cut, but LA’s schools, which educate more students than any district in the country save for NYC, do not.
Good Lord. That’s a real problem! If the Left want to earn a permanent place in US politics they need a public education policy platform! And the field is wide open. The country actually needs better education policy, because all we have are idiot fad-followers and privatizers like Arne Duncan on the Democratic side and venal tech baron salespeople and religious nuts on the Republican side.
This is a huge opening for the Left. They should grab it. They should include public schools that are safe and well-resourced and equitable and good places for children to learn and grow, because children spend so much of their lives in school.
