Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Wakefield

Check this out!

Obama will speak at my high school today and this article outlines why he would choose Wakefield--known as a "slum school" when I was there. Not by its own students, but by those at the other, richer, more well-endowed schools in Arlington--a suburb of Washington D.C..

I especially like the description about "the aging campus, which has a reputation for success with disadvantaged kids."

I didn't particularly like High School. I felt, in many ways, that my life began in college, when I was free at last of my controlling military father who still lived in the 1950s. However, looking back I do feel like my high school had a HUGE influence on my life. Not on my academics--like the kids who went to Exeter and Andover and took A.P. art history and economics in high school and studied in small seminars like college students. Rather my lessons were life lessons for which I am eternally grateful.

When I was there my high school had more languages spoken than any school in America, and was featured in a New York Times article at the time. There were immigrants from Laos, Cambodia, Latin America and countries that at the time I had never heard of. There were lots of African Americans and lots of diplomats kids. We had top A.P. classes, but the school was rough. There were knife fights in the halls between Vietnamese and Cambodians--who we clueless white kids could not tell apart. And the football games between our school and some other local largely African American High Schools got so violent that one year the schools decreed we could only have games before dark, so rumbles wouldn't break out.

I ran track with Africans and sat in calculus class with Vietnamese refugees who could only speak French but could solve the Russian math challenges our Quaker, Vietnam war boycotting calculus teacher handed out. I rode home on the after school bus with black kids who freak danced in the aisles, and waited at the busstop with a young Vietnamese kid who told me earnestly at the end of a year of not much conversation "I hope we have a truly immoral friendship." I knew he had been practicicing for months, so I said, "Me, too."

I think about all this a lot as I think about my kids. I think about what I want from them as I plan out their education. Do I want private school? or public? A diverse student body? Or a smart, homogeneous one?

I kicked ass in high school and got into a top college. I took multiple A.P. tests and scored so well I could have skipped my freshman year if my parents had wanted to save money. The schools were good. The latin and math programs legendary. But when I look back, the lesson I treasure most from my high school, was that it was my last snapshot of real life. I rubbed shoulders with every class and culture. I ran relays with immigrants and took computer and driver's ed class with kids who had escaped horrible regimes. My bus took me through expensive neighborhoods and slums. I learned to care. I learned that social justice matters. And I learned that every one of these kids had a story, a talent, and a right to everything I had.

As much as every school I attended after that bragged of diversity, no school except Wakefield ever achieved it.

It changed my life, my views, my perception of American society. It make me a journalist who cared about changing the world, and making it fairer for everyone in it.

My son now attends a charter school we helped found that is committed to high achievement across every social class--and to enrolling 35-40% title one kids to show that they, too,can score high and do well, with the right education. As I read about my high school today, I think, just like Wakefield.

Gobama!

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