Falling Behind: The opportunity gap
On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti
WBUR
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 27 August 2025
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Data show boys are falling behind in school. Black boys are falling behind the most. What’s happening in classrooms that are bucking that trend? On Point’s weeklong series exploring boys and education continues.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at BU Questrum School of Business that asks the thorny questions necessary for this moment. |
| 0:11.6 | Follow Is Business Broken and stay tuned for new episodes this fall. |
| 0:16.5 | WBUR Podcasts, Boston. |
| 0:30.3 | I'm sitting in a conference room at a middle school in West Philadelphia, and around the table with me are three black boys. |
| 0:33.3 | My name's Keegan Marion. |
| 0:35.0 | I'm in sixth grade, and I'm 12. |
| 0:37.4 | My name, Jane and Casey. I'm in eighth grade, and I'm 14. My name's Keegan Marion. I'm in sixth grade and I'm 12. My name is Jaden and Casey. I'm an eighth grade and I'm 14. |
| 0:40.7 | My name is Isaiah Scott. I'm an eighth grade and now I'm 14. |
| 0:44.3 | We talk about what they love about school, what they don't love, who their favorite teachers are, |
| 0:49.5 | and how they see school as a major part of fulfilling their life dreams. |
| 1:02.0 | Isaiah, Jaden, and Keegan are thoughtful, sensitive, and so captivating I forget to point the mic at myself. Lots of people have certain things they just assume about black young men. |
| 1:08.0 | What do you think some of the things are that are just assumed about who you are |
| 1:12.1 | as a young black man? Some of them things are like they think like gyps because your skin color |
| 1:17.8 | think that you could don't violence, certain violence because they see other black children on the |
| 1:23.5 | news could do violence, killing robbery and stuff like that. How does it feel that someone just makes that presumption about you? |
| 1:30.3 | Like it don't feel good, like it brings you down. |
| 1:34.3 | Even to add on with Jaden, our race and like the whole, like it got better, like most people |
| 1:41.3 | are starting to understand us more, but I feel like we shouldn't be getting accused for certain stuff again. |
| 1:46.0 | And like, they just all think that all black people are in the streets, mostly. |
| 1:50.0 | A lot of things that, like, some people would think about, like, black people is that they're just, like, ghetto, they're disrespectful. |
| 1:59.0 | And I think that's wrong because some people, they can be like that, but |
| 2:05.4 | there's another side. There's always two sides of a story. And I think that really side matters |
... |
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