The Case for Public Schools with Courtney Martin

Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast

NBCNews

News, Nbcnews, Why Is This Happening?, The Chris Hayes Podcast, Chris Hayes, Politics, Government, Society & Culture, Msnbc, Withpod

4.6 • 8.9K Ratings

🗓️ 6 September 2022

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Which school a child attends and with who has an enormous effect on their life trajectory. For decades, the question of which kids get access to which schools has been a central point of conflict in American democratic politics. The de-segregation efforts after Brown have, in the last few decades largely reversed and schools are growing more and more racially segregated. Making the intentional choice to swim against this tide is the subject of “Learning in Public: Lessons for a Racially Divided America from My Daughter's School.” Author Courtney Martin joins WITHpod to discuss writing the memoir and her journey moving from Brooklyn to enrolling her daughter in a local school down the street from her home in an Oakland co-housing community. She also talks about navigating school choice, why public schools are the “foundation of our fragile democracy,” and why these decisions provide a powerful starting point for creating social change and the kind of multi-racial democracy we deserve to have.

Transcript

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0:00.0	For me, this is just really believing in the potential of this moment.
0:06.0	And what I do see is a very genuine desire on the part of people who have historically
0:09.9	had a lot of privilege to do things differently.
0:12.2	Let's do it differently.
0:13.5	Let's not just read differently or watch differently or listen differently.
0:17.0	Let's physically and with our resources and our own very own children do things differently.
0:21.4	Hello and welcome to Wise This Happening With Me, your host Chris Hayes.
0:33.9	It's back to school season.
0:35.0	I love back to school season.
0:36.6	I always have.
0:37.6	I was one of those kids who liked to go back to school.
0:39.8	I think there's like two kinds of kids.
0:41.2	There's kids that like to go back to school and kids who don't like to go back to school.
0:44.4	You listen to the podcast.
0:45.9	You probably had me pegged as a former to be totally honest.
0:48.7	I don't think that's a big reveal.
0:50.2	Partly because my summers tended to be, I was not doing like big bike trips through
0:56.6	the mountains or fun sleep way camps.
0:59.1	It was a lot of like a hundred degree weather on basketball courts by myself from my
1:03.7	one friend who was around or going to day camps in the Bronx.
1:08.1	That said, back to school season is exciting.
1:10.4	I've got three kids of course.
	...

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