More Edumacation

I was trying to figure out where I could get a Slingshot Organizer up here (I figured, being New York, they sell them somewhere, and they do. But sheesh, out of 5 places that sell them in Florida, 3 are in Gainesville.) and I came across this article in their current issue: "Who's Schools? Not Ours"

It's about a teacher in Oakland, CA, unsurprisingly another place where The New Teacher Project has set up shop. All I know of high need schools in New York and of the Teaching Fellows is from what I've read and what I've overheard from Eric; maybe he'd like to weigh in on all this... ahem!

But I'm provoked to a similar reaction every time I read these kinds of things about our nation's schools:

"Teachers in public schools — especially, although not only, urban schools — look at what is happening around us and conclude that public education as an institution may soon cease to exist. Some kids will still be educated well — if they can pay for a private school. Those who can’t will attend a hollowed out shell of a school, with exhausted and severely depleted missionary teachers. Public schools will be nothing more than holding pens for the unemployed of the future — in Oakland, for example, the African-American kids, the Latino/as, the Cambodians and Laotians and Ethiopians and Yemenis and Vietnamese and Hmong and on, and on."

This kind of thinking seems a shade pessimistic to me because of the public education I had. I feel very fortunate. And I also feel upset. This argument is probably more realistic than pessimistic. And certainly more true than it should be.