----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Smith" <mjs at smithbowen.net>
Maybe this: there's less difference than you might think. The children of the elite are also under the harrow. It's really a kind of mass psychosis, our collective thinking abut what schools should do and achieve, and how we should all fall in with their program.
The elites send their kids to institutions which are just as totalizing and dehumanizing as the KIPP schools; but the grounds look nicer, and so do the teachers and the kids themselves. These schools don't admit any Ugly Ducklings.
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Well.....I do know what you mean, I do. But still. The elite schools have labs, and music, and arts, and foreign language, and history, and exchange programs. The KIPP schools have bubble tests and, increasingly, unqualified teachers, and rats in the bathrooms, and no playground equipment, and no libraries.
It's not quite the same.
Joanna