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Reena Kapoor's avatar

This was fantastic and inspiring. The simple fact that she sets high expectations of her students is half the battle - and that’s high expectations on all fronts behavioral as well as academic - and radical in todays insane, progressive world. The notion that poor and minority kids shouldn’t be held to such high standards is the definition of racism and elitism, no matter how we dress it up. Somehow we’ve decided that virtue lies in treating those less fortunate as if they’re too stupid and morally incompetent to compete so give them an inferior system. The irony is thick.

Here in the US, there’s been another great casualty of our failed education system. With globalization, which the elite have most benefited from, industrial towns have emptied out. There are no jobs or livelihoods to sustain them. Unfortunately the education system failed to teach those left behind how to learn or retrain and that’s resulted in a massive social and economic crisis, INCLUDING the opioid crisis and simmering unrest. The appeal of populist demagoguery to such populations can’t be overstated, and we wonder what happened to our wonderful liberal promise?!! It’s amazing how much can be traced back to our failed education experiment!

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Amy From Michigan's avatar

Brilliant! First heard of this woman and her school on an interview on the Brendan O’Neill podcast. She’s inspiring and just an amazing figure. This article was wonderful to read and I actually got tears in my eyes reading about the students quoting the Kipling poem.

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