Seriously?

Now, before you start, yes- I did take a full day’s rest in the sun yesterday.  I stayed off the internet and only read magazines and listened to RadioLab.  And, yes- I do get out.  I had drinks with friends last night and will again tonight.  And unlike you folks who check my blog every 10 seconds (kidding, totally kidding), I do have other things going on in my life.  It’s just, if I posted about concerts, carnivals and food coops it wouldn’t be fosterhood anymore.

Also, I did read all of your comments and am absorbing them (except for the birth mom bashing one, but it’s best to just ignore those marginal rants unless I want to start censoring and if I do that then I really wouldn’t have a life). 

Now back to the “Seriously?” part.  This.  My problem?  It requires BEING ABLE TO READ.  I was hit with another wave of how-much-would-it-suck-to-be-illiterate?!  The closest I’ve ever come was when I lived in Japan for 18 months and had no interest in learning to read or write Japanese.  I mean, like my brain took one look at kanji and said NOPE.  That led to things like accidentally slopping a can of dog food on top of my rice (what country doesn’t put a photo of a DOG on that shit?), registering for a bicycle permit when I thought I filled out a form to pay my phone bill, ignoring “We’re shutting-off-your-water-for-a-month-due-to-repairs-letters from the government and other shenanigans that were endearing when I was 19 years old.  It wouldn’t be cute if I was trying to enroll my child in school.

But what if I had lived in Tokyo in a neighborhood where less than half of the kids graduate from high school?  And there were a bazillion better options other than walking across the street to the elementary school, but even doing that- being told to bring some more forms into the elementary school before dropping off my kid- is just asking too, too much.

It looks like the illiteracy rate in Brooklyn is between 29%-47%.  

I know this is yet another can of worms, but why aren’t there economic desegration laws?  When I was a kid I was bused far away to create better schools with more diversity- couldn’t it work again?

My friend teaches at a public school in Brooklyn Heights and she used to teach in Washington Heights.  The difference in quality is insane and the key factor is one is full of poor kids and absent parents (most of the time because they’re just trying to survive and provide for their families) and one full of rich kids with overinvolved parents.  Go ahead, tell me why this is a bad idea… I can take it.  :)

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  1. madelineinvines reblogged this from fosterhood
  2. shiningstar said: I too was a deseg kid and I couldn’t be more grateful for the experience.
  3. fosterhood posted this