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Learning in Public: Lessons for a Racially Divided America from My Daughter's School
This "provocative and personally searching"memoir follows one mother's story of enrolling her daughter in a local public school ( San Francisco Chronicle ), and the surprising, necessary lessons she learned with her neighbors. From the time Courtney E. Martin strapped her daughter, Maya, to her chest for long walks, she was curious about Emerson Elementary, a public school down the street from her Oakland home. She learned that White families in their gentrifying neighborhood largely avoided the majority-Black, poorly-rated school. As she began asking why, a journey of a thousand moral miles began.
Learning in Public is the story, not just Courtney’s journey, but a whole country’s. Many of us are newly awakened to the continuing racial injustice all around us, but unsure of how to go beyond hashtags and yard signs to be a part of transforming the country. Courtney discovers that her public school, the foundation of our fragile democracy, is a powerful place to dig deeper.
Courtney E. Martin examines her own fears, assumptions, and conversations with other moms and dads as they navigate school choice. A vivid portrait of integration’s virtues and complexities, and yes, the palpable joy of trying to live differently in a country re-making itself. Learning in Public might also set your family’s life on a different course forever.
Learning in Public is the story, not just Courtney’s journey, but a whole country’s. Many of us are newly awakened to the continuing racial injustice all around us, but unsure of how to go beyond hashtags and yard signs to be a part of transforming the country. Courtney discovers that her public school, the foundation of our fragile democracy, is a powerful place to dig deeper.
Courtney E. Martin examines her own fears, assumptions, and conversations with other moms and dads as they navigate school choice. A vivid portrait of integration’s virtues and complexities, and yes, the palpable joy of trying to live differently in a country re-making itself. Learning in Public might also set your family’s life on a different course forever.
400 pages, Paperback
Published August 16, 2022
58 people are currently reading
3291 people want to read
About the author
Courtney E. Martin
11 books184 followersCourtney is a weekly columnist for On Being, a Peabody Award-winning public radio conversation, podcast, and Webby Award-winning website. Her newest book,
The New Better Off: Reinventing the American Dream
explores how people are redefining the "good life" in the wake of the Great Recession.
Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, the Christian Science Monitor, and Mother Jones, among other publications. Courtney has given two TED talks, one on the reinvention of feminism and the other (forthcoming in September) on the reinvention of the American Dream. She has also appeared on Good Morning America, The TODAY Show, The O’Reilly Factor, CNN, and MSNBC, among other major media outlets. She is a widely sought after speaker, who gives several dozen lectures and speeches annually.
Courtney’s first book, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: How the Quest for Perfection is Harming Young Women was awarded a Books for a Better Life nomination and was called "smart and spirited" by The New York Times. She is also the author of Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists , Project Rebirth: Survival and the Strength of the Human Spirit from 9/11 Survivors , released in conjunction with a documentary film, called Rebirth, by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Jim Whitaker, CLICK: When We Knew We Were Feminists , co-edited with J. Courtney Sullivan, and The Naked Truth: Young, Beautiful and (HIV) Positive , the life story of AIDS activist Marvelyn Brown.
Courtney has surprised herself by co-founding a series of status quo bucking enterprises: the Solutions Journalism Network, popularizing the practice of rigorous, compelling reporting about responses to social problems, FRESH Speakers Bureau, and Valenti Martin Media. Courtney also does ongoing strategy work with TED and the Aspen Institute. She is on the Council of Advisors of the Wellesley Centers for Women, Family Story, and Feministing.com.
Courtney is a recipient of the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics and has held residencies at the Roc
Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, the Christian Science Monitor, and Mother Jones, among other publications. Courtney has given two TED talks, one on the reinvention of feminism and the other (forthcoming in September) on the reinvention of the American Dream. She has also appeared on Good Morning America, The TODAY Show, The O’Reilly Factor, CNN, and MSNBC, among other major media outlets. She is a widely sought after speaker, who gives several dozen lectures and speeches annually.
Courtney’s first book, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: How the Quest for Perfection is Harming Young Women was awarded a Books for a Better Life nomination and was called "smart and spirited" by The New York Times. She is also the author of Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists , Project Rebirth: Survival and the Strength of the Human Spirit from 9/11 Survivors , released in conjunction with a documentary film, called Rebirth, by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Jim Whitaker, CLICK: When We Knew We Were Feminists , co-edited with J. Courtney Sullivan, and The Naked Truth: Young, Beautiful and (HIV) Positive , the life story of AIDS activist Marvelyn Brown.
Courtney has surprised herself by co-founding a series of status quo bucking enterprises: the Solutions Journalism Network, popularizing the practice of rigorous, compelling reporting about responses to social problems, FRESH Speakers Bureau, and Valenti Martin Media. Courtney also does ongoing strategy work with TED and the Aspen Institute. She is on the Council of Advisors of the Wellesley Centers for Women, Family Story, and Feministing.com.
Courtney is a recipient of the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics and has held residencies at the Roc
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August 1, 2021
(free review copy) Damn, this is complicated. Usually with books that have a major impact on me, I'm able to run around yelling, "YOU need to read this book, and YOU, and YOU, and YOU!". But I don't think that's appropriate here, because this book hit me so hard because of who I am, what I've lived, and what I haven't. It won't be THE book for everyone.
For context: I'm a 40-year-old White mother and school librarian living in rural Wisconsin, working in a small city school district. I grew up in even more rural Wisconsin and went to college in the same small city where I work. I consider myself liberal and progressive and passionate about social justice issues. But the school I work in is 98% White and the schools my kids attend are too, mostly because of the demographics of the communities the schools are in. Where I live, most towns are small and have exactly one school to choose from. You can open enroll to other towns and districts or to parochial schools, but the racial make-up doesn't change a ton. My parents were public school educators (my mom attended college while I was in elementary school), and I work in public schools now and my husband is a Teamster driver. We get by okay but are in no way as wealthy as the community of White parents portrayed in this book. We have so much privilege, but not the money.
All that context to help you understand why the book was such an eye-opener for me. Sure, I've read academic works on school segregation and integration, and know on a conceptual / professional level the disparities in schools. However, the motherhood lens that this book was written through was what gave it such power for me. As someone who considers myself on an anti-racist journey, I squirmed HARD at a lot of what Martin shared about her own family's decision in this book. Her skewering of White progressives was aimed at both herself and me, and it's always harder (less easy to dismiss) to hear a critical message from one of your own. There are so many worthy and academic voices to listen to on this topic, but just like your mom telling you she's disappointed in you, the sting of disapproval hurts most from those closest to you.
Readers who have lived in Oakland, Black readers, readers who live in other communities like Oakland, anyone who has a different background than I do ........... you might know all this already. You may live it everyday and roll your eyes and get pissed at the rich White lady coming in and writing about your lived experience. Readers who care zero about integrating schools and who are just fine with things the way they are now, you probably won't read this book. There are many, many scholarly works out there about this topic, but the tone of this and the narrative style are why I finished it in a day. Do we have a White Savior on our hands, you may ask? Well, that's what Martin is asking herself and wrestling with the entire time. Personally, I think she does an okay job of laying her White guilt over the entire story and ensuring that readers understand she's sharing her own journey of trying to do better, but not always knowing exactly how. That listening to and letting Black parents lead is the best way to help majority-Black schools.
Another thing to note is that like the rest of the damn world, COVID brought the arc of this story to a screeching halt and completely changed where it was going. The last section of the book (about 60 pages out of a total 365) was a bit of a disappointment to me because of course, EVERYTHING CHANGED as soon as COVID hit and of course Martin's experience in the neighborhood and with her reporting had to change. I don't know if anything could have been done with that, and I guess it's just a sign of the times. Also, I struggled to relate to the wealth Martin writes about because it's just not the world I live in, and have honestly never really even been exposed to. However, this book overall left me thinking hard on this topic and discussing it with friends. If it gets me digging deeper and reading harder and investigating more, then the author did her job exceptionally well.
Highly recommended for White progressives who are open to a hard reality check.
For context: I'm a 40-year-old White mother and school librarian living in rural Wisconsin, working in a small city school district. I grew up in even more rural Wisconsin and went to college in the same small city where I work. I consider myself liberal and progressive and passionate about social justice issues. But the school I work in is 98% White and the schools my kids attend are too, mostly because of the demographics of the communities the schools are in. Where I live, most towns are small and have exactly one school to choose from. You can open enroll to other towns and districts or to parochial schools, but the racial make-up doesn't change a ton. My parents were public school educators (my mom attended college while I was in elementary school), and I work in public schools now and my husband is a Teamster driver. We get by okay but are in no way as wealthy as the community of White parents portrayed in this book. We have so much privilege, but not the money.
All that context to help you understand why the book was such an eye-opener for me. Sure, I've read academic works on school segregation and integration, and know on a conceptual / professional level the disparities in schools. However, the motherhood lens that this book was written through was what gave it such power for me. As someone who considers myself on an anti-racist journey, I squirmed HARD at a lot of what Martin shared about her own family's decision in this book. Her skewering of White progressives was aimed at both herself and me, and it's always harder (less easy to dismiss) to hear a critical message from one of your own. There are so many worthy and academic voices to listen to on this topic, but just like your mom telling you she's disappointed in you, the sting of disapproval hurts most from those closest to you.
Readers who have lived in Oakland, Black readers, readers who live in other communities like Oakland, anyone who has a different background than I do ........... you might know all this already. You may live it everyday and roll your eyes and get pissed at the rich White lady coming in and writing about your lived experience. Readers who care zero about integrating schools and who are just fine with things the way they are now, you probably won't read this book. There are many, many scholarly works out there about this topic, but the tone of this and the narrative style are why I finished it in a day. Do we have a White Savior on our hands, you may ask? Well, that's what Martin is asking herself and wrestling with the entire time. Personally, I think she does an okay job of laying her White guilt over the entire story and ensuring that readers understand she's sharing her own journey of trying to do better, but not always knowing exactly how. That listening to and letting Black parents lead is the best way to help majority-Black schools.
Another thing to note is that like the rest of the damn world, COVID brought the arc of this story to a screeching halt and completely changed where it was going. The last section of the book (about 60 pages out of a total 365) was a bit of a disappointment to me because of course, EVERYTHING CHANGED as soon as COVID hit and of course Martin's experience in the neighborhood and with her reporting had to change. I don't know if anything could have been done with that, and I guess it's just a sign of the times. Also, I struggled to relate to the wealth Martin writes about because it's just not the world I live in, and have honestly never really even been exposed to. However, this book overall left me thinking hard on this topic and discussing it with friends. If it gets me digging deeper and reading harder and investigating more, then the author did her job exceptionally well.
Highly recommended for White progressives who are open to a hard reality check.
August 31, 2021
A lot of potential but as I continued reading I realized this book was written more for the author than for her readers. Despite her intentions of trying to convey herself as a “woke” white woman, the author came across as trying a bit too hard in her efforts. While she may not be pretentious, she still displays undertones of the “white savior” mentality.
December 9, 2022
Reading this was difficult in ways I did not expect. I believe in and practice school integration, and I can relate to the author in many ways. I've had those awkward, cringe-worthy interactions across lines of difference where I am trying my best but failing to see so many pitfalls caused by my own biases. And I am a patreon of the author's newsletter; I generally find her very inspiring and contemplative. So it was a surprise to me that I had so many big feelings reading this.
I was not expecting the book to be so detailed in putting not only the author's journey and mess out there, but the journeys and mess of the other players in the book . . . the disabled single Black dad, the aggressive white mom who feels entitled to tell the principal and teacher how to do their jobs (who winds up being an obvious foil to the author), the inscrutable Black preK teacher. I believe the author had their permission and presented herself as a journalist who was trying to report on this as objectively as possible, but I was surprised to discover that she didn't change the names of the schools or anyone who was even remotely a public figure.
Perhaps because I could relate so much to the author's experiences, I was imagining if I were putting out the words and actions of my principal, my kids' teachers, the parents whom I befriend, etc. in a book. It felt invasive and exploitative, literally making money off of sharing these things. And knowing that these events all happened within the last couple of years only magnified that feeling. How can you painstakingly build trust despite systemic obstacles and power imbalances if you are recording and publishing everything your newfound friend says?
Maybe it was the author's journalism background that convinced her to be so detailed in sharing her interactions with other players, but I wish she had taken more of a general view. If journalism was her goal, she could have interviewed other parents experiencing segregation and integration from different viewpoints. But to write a detailed memoir about this subject, I think it would have been best to wait for more distance from the events (if my math is correct, her oldest is only starting 2nd grade). It took the founder of Integrated Schools many years to feel emboldened to guide others.
I do appreciate that she did the work of asking for feedback from a Black mentor, but I can see the point of Danzy Senna in her review in the Atlantic when she says, "The world these writers [Martin and Robin DiAngelo] evoke is one in which white people remain the center of the story and Black people are at the margins, poor, stiff, and dignified, with little better to do than open their homes and hearts to white women on journeys to racial self-awareness." On one hand, I love that Martin was so honest and retained the turns of phrase where her bias came out (calling the single dad a "creature"), but on the other, I can imagine prospective integrators thinking, "Well shoot, I don't have a Black PhD waiting to give feedback on my every move . . . should I give up before I start?" Most importantly, I don't think ANY white person should expect to be shepherded by people of color.
In full disclosure, it could just be me. I am not a memoir reader; I haven't even read the Obamas' memoirs. Maybe I got too into my head; maybe I don't like being in other people's heads. If you are someone who finds joy and inspiration reading memoirs, or if you are someone who doesn't know much about segregation or the common pitfalls to practicing antiracist school integration, then this book may be just for you.
What I did like . . . the history and sociology, the more creative sections (poems and important phrases repeated many times), the awareness brought to the evil of segregation. I see positive reviews and I am thankful that my experience is not universal. I know that privileged white folks need to say, hey, hello, I have been hugely oblivious to my biases and here's how I'm learning to spot them and change direction. It's important and necessary. I just wish it had been done in a different way.
ETA: One more area that weighed heavily on my heart was the portrayal of the author as the emotional support of the teachers during the pandemic, and her end note that she'll see the teachers "on the field at sunset."
I attended a workshop with the late Courtney Mykytyn, founder of Integrated Schools, and she was very adamant that white parents *not* be the BFF of the teacher because that's a white parent thing. I was a teacher and goodness knows they need support, but the white parent as a texting buddy of the teacher, as a *peer* and friend, is part of white supremacy culture and further perpetuates power imbalances when that's not the expectation or position held by Black and Brown parents. If there's a wish list I quietly buy from it, but I try to maintain a professional distance from the teachers and staff.
It's all well and good to aim for self-awareness, to struggle over how to show up and how not to, but if in the end you're the PTA president and have made yourself integral to the entire staff, is it OK to perpetuate white supremacy culture patterns because people just like you so darn much?
Again, I circle back to . . . this was too much, too soon. I wish the author well on her journey. I know she has a sharp mind and open heart.
Update Dec. 2022: I met a mom recently who was inspired by this book to pull her child from private school and put them in a hyper-segregated school. So again I thought, maybe it's just me. Maybe if you haven't been introduced to the idea of not putting your child in a privileged school, this book is a good starting point.
I was not expecting the book to be so detailed in putting not only the author's journey and mess out there, but the journeys and mess of the other players in the book . . . the disabled single Black dad, the aggressive white mom who feels entitled to tell the principal and teacher how to do their jobs (who winds up being an obvious foil to the author), the inscrutable Black preK teacher. I believe the author had their permission and presented herself as a journalist who was trying to report on this as objectively as possible, but I was surprised to discover that she didn't change the names of the schools or anyone who was even remotely a public figure.
Perhaps because I could relate so much to the author's experiences, I was imagining if I were putting out the words and actions of my principal, my kids' teachers, the parents whom I befriend, etc. in a book. It felt invasive and exploitative, literally making money off of sharing these things. And knowing that these events all happened within the last couple of years only magnified that feeling. How can you painstakingly build trust despite systemic obstacles and power imbalances if you are recording and publishing everything your newfound friend says?
Maybe it was the author's journalism background that convinced her to be so detailed in sharing her interactions with other players, but I wish she had taken more of a general view. If journalism was her goal, she could have interviewed other parents experiencing segregation and integration from different viewpoints. But to write a detailed memoir about this subject, I think it would have been best to wait for more distance from the events (if my math is correct, her oldest is only starting 2nd grade). It took the founder of Integrated Schools many years to feel emboldened to guide others.
I do appreciate that she did the work of asking for feedback from a Black mentor, but I can see the point of Danzy Senna in her review in the Atlantic when she says, "The world these writers [Martin and Robin DiAngelo] evoke is one in which white people remain the center of the story and Black people are at the margins, poor, stiff, and dignified, with little better to do than open their homes and hearts to white women on journeys to racial self-awareness." On one hand, I love that Martin was so honest and retained the turns of phrase where her bias came out (calling the single dad a "creature"), but on the other, I can imagine prospective integrators thinking, "Well shoot, I don't have a Black PhD waiting to give feedback on my every move . . . should I give up before I start?" Most importantly, I don't think ANY white person should expect to be shepherded by people of color.
In full disclosure, it could just be me. I am not a memoir reader; I haven't even read the Obamas' memoirs. Maybe I got too into my head; maybe I don't like being in other people's heads. If you are someone who finds joy and inspiration reading memoirs, or if you are someone who doesn't know much about segregation or the common pitfalls to practicing antiracist school integration, then this book may be just for you.
What I did like . . . the history and sociology, the more creative sections (poems and important phrases repeated many times), the awareness brought to the evil of segregation. I see positive reviews and I am thankful that my experience is not universal. I know that privileged white folks need to say, hey, hello, I have been hugely oblivious to my biases and here's how I'm learning to spot them and change direction. It's important and necessary. I just wish it had been done in a different way.
ETA: One more area that weighed heavily on my heart was the portrayal of the author as the emotional support of the teachers during the pandemic, and her end note that she'll see the teachers "on the field at sunset."
I attended a workshop with the late Courtney Mykytyn, founder of Integrated Schools, and she was very adamant that white parents *not* be the BFF of the teacher because that's a white parent thing. I was a teacher and goodness knows they need support, but the white parent as a texting buddy of the teacher, as a *peer* and friend, is part of white supremacy culture and further perpetuates power imbalances when that's not the expectation or position held by Black and Brown parents. If there's a wish list I quietly buy from it, but I try to maintain a professional distance from the teachers and staff.
It's all well and good to aim for self-awareness, to struggle over how to show up and how not to, but if in the end you're the PTA president and have made yourself integral to the entire staff, is it OK to perpetuate white supremacy culture patterns because people just like you so darn much?
Again, I circle back to . . . this was too much, too soon. I wish the author well on her journey. I know she has a sharp mind and open heart.
Update Dec. 2022: I met a mom recently who was inspired by this book to pull her child from private school and put them in a hyper-segregated school. So again I thought, maybe it's just me. Maybe if you haven't been introduced to the idea of not putting your child in a privileged school, this book is a good starting point.
January 18, 2022
Courtney Martin presents the many issues of school integration as she encountered them as a parent. She reports her personal experiences, her research on the issues and her friendships, encounters and interviews with teachers, administrators, students and activists.
The first third of the book covers the process of choosing a school for her daughter. Living in Oakland she has 4 nearby schools to explore. Due to Oakland’s (hillside/exquisite view) geography nearby schools include 3 schools which have different levels of support, but can all be considered “well resourced” and a 4th that is ranked on the bottom of the greatschools.com scoreboard. Martin is well aware that cumulative decisions of parents who compete to have their children in one of the higher rated schools is the reason why the poorly resourced 4th school, Emerson, is only 6% White.
Martin’s log of how she made her decision includes school tours, talking with other parents, contacting national organizations such as Global Majority Schools and visiting websites such as greatschools.com and Integrated Schools. While Emerson aligns with her values, would she be depriving her daughter of what the “well resourced” schools offer? She examines her thinking, emotions and values.
In this first section, there is a bit on the history of school integration. Pages 47-49 tell the story of Ruby Bridges (who bravely tested Brown v. Board of Education) and experienced the total harassment of her family. We have all see the Norman Rockwell drawing… but few, including me until now... know the story of what followed.
The next two thirds of the book are about the Emerson experience. She reports on everyday school life describing lessons, assignments, library/reading materials, her talks with other parents, her daughter making friends, a birthday party, fund raisers and parent groups. The first two years at Emerson also include larger events: a teacher strike, COVID policies and a proposed school closure.
Martin shows how the people deal who live with the system everyday try to make changes such as the master teacher Mrs. Minor, the rigid and unself-aware Blair, and “the other Courtney".
The school closure controversy clearly illustrates how those with resources fight to keep them, while only a few are brave enough to speak out about the fairness of the situation.
The experience of neighbors Andre (father) and Daruis (son) whose family has lived in a house just a few doors away from the Martin’s, essentially tells the story of how gentrification effects not just the education, but the entire life situation of the neighborhood’s original residents.
There is research comparing achievement (and the questionable premises of the research) with per capita funding, zip code, later education and earnings and more. Ironically, the achievement tests, promoted as essential (noted as a $700 million industry) were suspended for COVID by those who have been most vocal in promoting them. There isn’t much on charter schools (enrolling 1/3 of Oakland’s students) which are only mentioned in passing as taking the per student allotment from the general fund for other schools.
I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in public education. For professionals who study this from afar. I particularly recommend it for the personal experience which is well integrated into the policy and research aspects of the book.
The first third of the book covers the process of choosing a school for her daughter. Living in Oakland she has 4 nearby schools to explore. Due to Oakland’s (hillside/exquisite view) geography nearby schools include 3 schools which have different levels of support, but can all be considered “well resourced” and a 4th that is ranked on the bottom of the greatschools.com scoreboard. Martin is well aware that cumulative decisions of parents who compete to have their children in one of the higher rated schools is the reason why the poorly resourced 4th school, Emerson, is only 6% White.
Martin’s log of how she made her decision includes school tours, talking with other parents, contacting national organizations such as Global Majority Schools and visiting websites such as greatschools.com and Integrated Schools. While Emerson aligns with her values, would she be depriving her daughter of what the “well resourced” schools offer? She examines her thinking, emotions and values.
In this first section, there is a bit on the history of school integration. Pages 47-49 tell the story of Ruby Bridges (who bravely tested Brown v. Board of Education) and experienced the total harassment of her family. We have all see the Norman Rockwell drawing… but few, including me until now... know the story of what followed.
The next two thirds of the book are about the Emerson experience. She reports on everyday school life describing lessons, assignments, library/reading materials, her talks with other parents, her daughter making friends, a birthday party, fund raisers and parent groups. The first two years at Emerson also include larger events: a teacher strike, COVID policies and a proposed school closure.
Martin shows how the people deal who live with the system everyday try to make changes such as the master teacher Mrs. Minor, the rigid and unself-aware Blair, and “the other Courtney".
The school closure controversy clearly illustrates how those with resources fight to keep them, while only a few are brave enough to speak out about the fairness of the situation.
The experience of neighbors Andre (father) and Daruis (son) whose family has lived in a house just a few doors away from the Martin’s, essentially tells the story of how gentrification effects not just the education, but the entire life situation of the neighborhood’s original residents.
There is research comparing achievement (and the questionable premises of the research) with per capita funding, zip code, later education and earnings and more. Ironically, the achievement tests, promoted as essential (noted as a $700 million industry) were suspended for COVID by those who have been most vocal in promoting them. There isn’t much on charter schools (enrolling 1/3 of Oakland’s students) which are only mentioned in passing as taking the per student allotment from the general fund for other schools.
I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in public education. For professionals who study this from afar. I particularly recommend it for the personal experience which is well integrated into the policy and research aspects of the book.
October 12, 2021
There was a lot to enjoy here. The author's experiences mirrored many that I've had as a white public school parent in Oakland (there were some scenes that I felt as if I had actually written myself). Her analysis is very astute and I liked that she didn't try to make everything neat and tidy. She is (as other reviewers have commented) especially smart when talking about other white parents and the way they talk about race (or don't talk about it) in relation to school decision making. It was fun for me to read about places and events that I was so familiar with.
Oh also, the bit about saying "My child's not gifted"? Gold, pure gold.
I felt like she was a little self-congratulatory at times (like in the part where she talks about recruiting parents of color for the SSC). Also that she conflates race and class at times. I was uncomfortable with her going after Saru Jayaraman so strongly in the Kaiser school merge debates - I couldn't disagree that some of the things she cited were problematic, but I thought it was troubling that she focused so much on a woman of color's role in what was a majority white group (and she really did focus in, for example I recall some judgy, superfluous description of Saru's interaction with her daughter).
I felt the title was misleading (though that's probably not her fault) - it's really mostly about school choice and only somewhat about her actual experiences at the school. Would love to hear more analysis and reflection once her daughter's been in school for some years.
Oh also, the bit about saying "My child's not gifted"? Gold, pure gold.
I felt like she was a little self-congratulatory at times (like in the part where she talks about recruiting parents of color for the SSC). Also that she conflates race and class at times. I was uncomfortable with her going after Saru Jayaraman so strongly in the Kaiser school merge debates - I couldn't disagree that some of the things she cited were problematic, but I thought it was troubling that she focused so much on a woman of color's role in what was a majority white group (and she really did focus in, for example I recall some judgy, superfluous description of Saru's interaction with her daughter).
I felt the title was misleading (though that's probably not her fault) - it's really mostly about school choice and only somewhat about her actual experiences at the school. Would love to hear more analysis and reflection once her daughter's been in school for some years.
February 15, 2022
Sometimes the worst books are the best ones to discuss. This wasn’t the worst book I’ve read, but it’s one that I’d love to discuss because I have some thoughts.
Wayyyyy too many chapters. 123 to be exact. Was it cool that she was in a yoga class with Angela Davis? Sure, but it didn’t need to be mentioned. I didn’t need to hear so much about the pushback regarding the merging of two schools, neither of which her kid attended. I also didn’t need the story about the grandparent having a medical incident on the playground. This book could have done with some serious editing.
I listened to the audiobook. While I appreciated that she had a Black woman act as her sensitivity reader, it was hard to understand when problematic statements were pointed out since the author read those herself. It was also hard to understand if the author learned anything from the feedback.
There were soooo many examples of white saviorism, and the author self-reflected on a few but that didn’t slow her down from continually treating one Black dad like a charity chase instead of like a peer and fellow parent. She also had a weird relationship with one of her daughter’s teachers. It felt like she hounded her even after the teacher left the school. Then the set up of Blair being her polar opposite as a pushy vvhite mom to the author’s supposedly cool vvhite mom…ick.
The parts I liked were the parts where I learned that school integration peaked in the 80s and school is now more segregated than it was in the 60s. I also liked when she shared stories about how her daughter was making friends and learning at the school and when she said vvhite parents are welcome to send their kids to majority Black schools, but that the parents need to sit down, shut up and listen. Great advice that the author could have heeded more. There’s also a great chapter where she references an article written by Nikole Hannah-Jones, but when I looked up the article later, I realized most of what the author read was exactly what Hannah-Jones had written in the article. Since I listened to the audiobook, I’m not sure what was direct quote and what was paraphrased, but it felt like all she did was regurgitate a Black woman’s words.
Overall, I like the idea of the book, and while parts of her journey were super cringy, I definitely identified at times. Maybe that’s part of why I struggle with it. It definitely made me continue thinking about school choice, a topic that’s been on my mind for a few years now even though my kids aren’t school age yet. I know the benefits of immersing my kids in classrooms with kids from different races, different socio economic backgrounds, different abilities and where English is not the first language spoken at home. Having grown up in PWI, I have a better understanding now of what I missed then. I love that I found a school system whose demographics include 30% white, 32% Black, 14% Hispanic, 14% Asian, 22% ESL and 72% low income. It’s sad that so many of the surrounding, sought after school systems are anywhere from 75 to 88% white.
Wayyyyy too many chapters. 123 to be exact. Was it cool that she was in a yoga class with Angela Davis? Sure, but it didn’t need to be mentioned. I didn’t need to hear so much about the pushback regarding the merging of two schools, neither of which her kid attended. I also didn’t need the story about the grandparent having a medical incident on the playground. This book could have done with some serious editing.
I listened to the audiobook. While I appreciated that she had a Black woman act as her sensitivity reader, it was hard to understand when problematic statements were pointed out since the author read those herself. It was also hard to understand if the author learned anything from the feedback.
There were soooo many examples of white saviorism, and the author self-reflected on a few but that didn’t slow her down from continually treating one Black dad like a charity chase instead of like a peer and fellow parent. She also had a weird relationship with one of her daughter’s teachers. It felt like she hounded her even after the teacher left the school. Then the set up of Blair being her polar opposite as a pushy vvhite mom to the author’s supposedly cool vvhite mom…ick.
The parts I liked were the parts where I learned that school integration peaked in the 80s and school is now more segregated than it was in the 60s. I also liked when she shared stories about how her daughter was making friends and learning at the school and when she said vvhite parents are welcome to send their kids to majority Black schools, but that the parents need to sit down, shut up and listen. Great advice that the author could have heeded more. There’s also a great chapter where she references an article written by Nikole Hannah-Jones, but when I looked up the article later, I realized most of what the author read was exactly what Hannah-Jones had written in the article. Since I listened to the audiobook, I’m not sure what was direct quote and what was paraphrased, but it felt like all she did was regurgitate a Black woman’s words.
Overall, I like the idea of the book, and while parts of her journey were super cringy, I definitely identified at times. Maybe that’s part of why I struggle with it. It definitely made me continue thinking about school choice, a topic that’s been on my mind for a few years now even though my kids aren’t school age yet. I know the benefits of immersing my kids in classrooms with kids from different races, different socio economic backgrounds, different abilities and where English is not the first language spoken at home. Having grown up in PWI, I have a better understanding now of what I missed then. I love that I found a school system whose demographics include 30% white, 32% Black, 14% Hispanic, 14% Asian, 22% ESL and 72% low income. It’s sad that so many of the surrounding, sought after school systems are anywhere from 75 to 88% white.
August 31, 2021
I don't think I can finish this one. Not bc it was boring (well, it kinda was toward the latter half) but more bc it was so dang long, for not being a very long audiobook it just felt long. Conversations were added that didn't need to be. The chapter names/poems/quotes started irritating me. I think this white mom had a lot of great intentions, but I also think this book needed a co-author by a black mom and dad. She kept saying how she didn't want to be a white savior, and yet it honestly felt like that's exactly what she (and most def her husband) were. Yes, she was also becoming friends with Black families (to which, golf clap... I guess... I can't tell if it was for this book, for her wokeness, or just for herself). And she was trying to be honest as she kept putting down other white people for being white folk (maybe even more so with her VO tone), but overall something felt off. I don't even know if I learned anything, which is what I was hoping for. I have an hour left of the book and I don't know if I want to listen to more COVID > let's give all our laptops to the Black kid story arch.
March 21, 2024
Unbearably smug white saviorism. I couldn’t make it a quarter of the way in.
August 12, 2021
Why did I expect this to be an inspiring book? I found it exhausting and in the end feel like Martin shouldn't have written it. Or she should have waited for a few years. Martin is a progressive White parent in Oakland who decides to send her daughter to the local school which is almost entirely Black and has low achievement scores, rather than to higher rated public or private schools like most of the other White parents. She is really trying hard to do this in the most positive, thoughtful way possible and to write about it at the same time. But it ends up feeling phony somehow with too much navel gazing -- and is she doing this to give herself something to make a book out of or because she really wants this experience for her daughter? The book is sad, too. We all know how unequal public education is in America and how feeble are our attempts at fixing it. There are so many educators and parents wanting more for all children who deserve a much better educational experience and yet we don't seem to be making any progress. What we end up with is endless school board meetings with people screaming at each other.
February 6, 2024
Who said at one point that in books featuring yourself, you ought not to be the hero? It would have been good advice for this book.
This was a frustrating read for me. Right off the bat it became abundantly clear that this was written for a very specific sub-set of white parents, the kind for whom, like the author and her husband, their family goal is to have a weekend convertible car, whose home is half a million dollars (this is explicitly stated), and for whom their child's education is a full-contact sport, and the cost -- 30k private school tuition vs free public school -- is not a driving decision-making factor.
Quick personal bias note: And I'm writing this review as a white mom who is a public librarian married to another public librarian; I am not upper middle class. We did send our children to a parochial school (with extremely generous financial aid, without which we could not have attended). We moved and our circumstances changed, and so we were happy to send them to our local zoned school (a Title 1 and 1 on GreatSchools). See also: My daughter is white, and my son is Black (and frankly having him be one of two Black kids in his private school grade was a driving factor in sending both kids to a Black majority school, and it's been a huge social positive). The white upper middle class depicted in this book are are the type I often felt like a charity case next to in the parochial school. (This is relevant in how I read a later interaction between Martin and a fellow parent later.)
This is all to say that I have some experience of the private vs public landscape, and it is so wildly different from the one depicted in this book. The concept of living somewhere without a whole school application process stands out as something not discussed (alongside white flight, which is strangely absent in a book about schools and race, other than mentions of loving how diverse Oakland is, even though its schools are apparently not). During the pandemic, we tried to send our kids to a public school that was open and closer to where we were essential workers -- and were met with a simple nope (although maybe we just aren't as good at greasing palms as the upper class...) Likewise, the idea of sending a child to a school *specifically* to integrate a school with a majority-POC student base lands the author in a position of being performative, and throughout the book she continually hangs onto that white savior narrative, despite clear internal chapters-long protestations.
Take for example her relationship with student Darius's father. He is a parent right alongside her at the school, yet she senses he needs her help, she offers them meals, we get painstaking chapters showing all the ways she offered them her iPad, her WiFi, her reading tutor for Darius, and she seems flummoxed by Darius's dad's lukewarm response and lack of reciprocal friendship. Anyone who's ever been on the receiving end of charity is likely already nodding, because the thing is, if the author doesn't see herself as a fundamental equal to this dad, if she is deciding she is the Helper (savior) then, no matter how kindly intentioned, it comes across as patronizing. That's not a foundation for friendship. That's why you're getting the lukewarm responses. The connection you're offering isn't one of equal parenting friends. And yes, that is going to be difficult when there are privilege factors front and center. But it really is odd that it's confusing her. What she's offering this dad is privileged, white benevolence -- even if the actions themselves really are good! It was frustrating to read her confusion, when it seemed obvious to me what was happening under the surface, at least probably for the dad. Nobody wants to be a charity case.
Of this relationship, reviewer Danzy Senna writes for The Atlantic: "Martin just can’t shake her patronizing belief that Black people need her to save them. Her effort to build on a friendship between her daughter and the son of a single Black father at the school unfolds like a salvation fantasy. She starts by pushing, awkwardly, for a playdate and, when the pandemic closes the school, loans the pair a laptop and tries to line up tutoring. Having learned that the father is picking up free lunches from the school, she fights the urge to drop a bag of groceries on his doorstep, afraid that will seem like insultingly blatant charity. Instead, she pretends she’s made too much pasta for her family, and offers to leave a container at his door, hoping it will seem neighborly, neutral—but hears nothing back. She gets that the dad may be rejecting her role as helper-with-the-resources. Or rather, Martin gets that she doesn’t really get it: 'His silence speaks. I don’t know what it says.'"
It was also interesting reading this book directly after THE TEACHERS by Alexandra Robbins, because TEACHERS is so clear that one of the biggest frustrations for teachers is parents cozying up to them and trying to be buddy-buddy, texting them personally, etc. For an author who continually reminds herself to show up and shut up, the seeming lack of understanding that the chummy-ness she's trying to cultivate with the teachers is inappropriate is strange. Ms. Minor is inscrutable. Okay, but does she need to be scrutable? She isn't a teacher to be your friend. But because upper middle class white parenting makes education a full-contact sport (especially, I suspect, if someone has a lot of time on their hands and doesn't have a timecard to punch) this seems normal to the author, I guess?
Then there are the footnotes from her sensitivity reader, which are very oddly left in place. The author says it's because we're all "learning in public" but it's very odd that so often, the challenges from the sensitivity reader are left without being changed from the text, such that, if you're not a footnotes-y type (or maybe reading on an eReader where you assume it's a citation rather than a footnote explaining her white privileged wording or viewpoint misstep) it's easy to miss. Once or two times the item is crossed out, but other time's it's left untouched save the footnote. It may be an honest attempt at Showing Her Work, but it comes across as performative, without any further reflection on it from the author, even in instances when the footnote suggests she reflect on why she worded something a certain way, or held a belief. Do you believe it, or is "someone told me that" sufficient to go without change? We don't see the work really, or the learning, we see the teacher teaching in the footnotes, and it's unclear if the "student" is listening, and in agreement, except in cases with strike-throughs.
Ultimately, I have to agree with other reviewers that this book seemed like it desperately needed an editor (I didn't need a chapter of navel-gazing and then looking up in yoga to see Angela Davis seated next to the author, nor did I need several alarming passages where the author seems to place herself and her "struggles" in the same room as those of Ruby Bridges, even while protesting that of course she's not nearly like that, but still, they had Journeys or something to that effect). Much of the book could have been entirely eliminated, and I'd hazard a guess it would be far more effective to look at this not JUST from the viewpoint of an incredibly privileged "having a weekend convertible is a totally normal thing to strive for, along with buying a vintage VW Bus off eBay" and (the worse offense in my opinion) the decision to on-the-fly match donations at a school fundraiser, because they can (anonymously, she stresses, and frets at the school BBQ when her husband trots off to do it -- are they being unobtrusive enough, will anyone pin this Good Deed on them?)
Not a bad thing to do, but writing about it....well, you said you wanted anonymity, but I guess not THAT much if it's going in a book with your name on it. It really negates the idea of "we didn't want to draw attention or be seen as saviors" when frankly, that action could have gone totally un-mentioned. What would it have done to the book to leave it out?
I think the author would have done well to gain voices from people in other walks of life who have made similar decisions, beyond rich upper-class folks who view their actions as ultimately benevolent. For a lot of us regular people without half-a-million-dollar-homes, it was like reading a lot of navel-gazing from someone for whom this was a little science experiment, starring themselves. And maybe it's not possible to write this kind of book without coming across as performative, but even then, choosing what you share publicly versus not is some wisdom missing (see: Darius's dad, the donation match, etc). I wonder how these people viewed this experiment and the author after publication.
There's a repetition of the idea throughout the book that white parents should show up, sit down and shut up. Is this book doing that?
Sometimes, learning can be private. I don't think this learning was fully digested enough to be public.
This was a frustrating read for me. Right off the bat it became abundantly clear that this was written for a very specific sub-set of white parents, the kind for whom, like the author and her husband, their family goal is to have a weekend convertible car, whose home is half a million dollars (this is explicitly stated), and for whom their child's education is a full-contact sport, and the cost -- 30k private school tuition vs free public school -- is not a driving decision-making factor.
Quick personal bias note: And I'm writing this review as a white mom who is a public librarian married to another public librarian; I am not upper middle class. We did send our children to a parochial school (with extremely generous financial aid, without which we could not have attended). We moved and our circumstances changed, and so we were happy to send them to our local zoned school (a Title 1 and 1 on GreatSchools). See also: My daughter is white, and my son is Black (and frankly having him be one of two Black kids in his private school grade was a driving factor in sending both kids to a Black majority school, and it's been a huge social positive). The white upper middle class depicted in this book are are the type I often felt like a charity case next to in the parochial school. (This is relevant in how I read a later interaction between Martin and a fellow parent later.)
This is all to say that I have some experience of the private vs public landscape, and it is so wildly different from the one depicted in this book. The concept of living somewhere without a whole school application process stands out as something not discussed (alongside white flight, which is strangely absent in a book about schools and race, other than mentions of loving how diverse Oakland is, even though its schools are apparently not). During the pandemic, we tried to send our kids to a public school that was open and closer to where we were essential workers -- and were met with a simple nope (although maybe we just aren't as good at greasing palms as the upper class...) Likewise, the idea of sending a child to a school *specifically* to integrate a school with a majority-POC student base lands the author in a position of being performative, and throughout the book she continually hangs onto that white savior narrative, despite clear internal chapters-long protestations.
Take for example her relationship with student Darius's father. He is a parent right alongside her at the school, yet she senses he needs her help, she offers them meals, we get painstaking chapters showing all the ways she offered them her iPad, her WiFi, her reading tutor for Darius, and she seems flummoxed by Darius's dad's lukewarm response and lack of reciprocal friendship. Anyone who's ever been on the receiving end of charity is likely already nodding, because the thing is, if the author doesn't see herself as a fundamental equal to this dad, if she is deciding she is the Helper (savior) then, no matter how kindly intentioned, it comes across as patronizing. That's not a foundation for friendship. That's why you're getting the lukewarm responses. The connection you're offering isn't one of equal parenting friends. And yes, that is going to be difficult when there are privilege factors front and center. But it really is odd that it's confusing her. What she's offering this dad is privileged, white benevolence -- even if the actions themselves really are good! It was frustrating to read her confusion, when it seemed obvious to me what was happening under the surface, at least probably for the dad. Nobody wants to be a charity case.
Of this relationship, reviewer Danzy Senna writes for The Atlantic: "Martin just can’t shake her patronizing belief that Black people need her to save them. Her effort to build on a friendship between her daughter and the son of a single Black father at the school unfolds like a salvation fantasy. She starts by pushing, awkwardly, for a playdate and, when the pandemic closes the school, loans the pair a laptop and tries to line up tutoring. Having learned that the father is picking up free lunches from the school, she fights the urge to drop a bag of groceries on his doorstep, afraid that will seem like insultingly blatant charity. Instead, she pretends she’s made too much pasta for her family, and offers to leave a container at his door, hoping it will seem neighborly, neutral—but hears nothing back. She gets that the dad may be rejecting her role as helper-with-the-resources. Or rather, Martin gets that she doesn’t really get it: 'His silence speaks. I don’t know what it says.'"
It was also interesting reading this book directly after THE TEACHERS by Alexandra Robbins, because TEACHERS is so clear that one of the biggest frustrations for teachers is parents cozying up to them and trying to be buddy-buddy, texting them personally, etc. For an author who continually reminds herself to show up and shut up, the seeming lack of understanding that the chummy-ness she's trying to cultivate with the teachers is inappropriate is strange. Ms. Minor is inscrutable. Okay, but does she need to be scrutable? She isn't a teacher to be your friend. But because upper middle class white parenting makes education a full-contact sport (especially, I suspect, if someone has a lot of time on their hands and doesn't have a timecard to punch) this seems normal to the author, I guess?
Then there are the footnotes from her sensitivity reader, which are very oddly left in place. The author says it's because we're all "learning in public" but it's very odd that so often, the challenges from the sensitivity reader are left without being changed from the text, such that, if you're not a footnotes-y type (or maybe reading on an eReader where you assume it's a citation rather than a footnote explaining her white privileged wording or viewpoint misstep) it's easy to miss. Once or two times the item is crossed out, but other time's it's left untouched save the footnote. It may be an honest attempt at Showing Her Work, but it comes across as performative, without any further reflection on it from the author, even in instances when the footnote suggests she reflect on why she worded something a certain way, or held a belief. Do you believe it, or is "someone told me that" sufficient to go without change? We don't see the work really, or the learning, we see the teacher teaching in the footnotes, and it's unclear if the "student" is listening, and in agreement, except in cases with strike-throughs.
Ultimately, I have to agree with other reviewers that this book seemed like it desperately needed an editor (I didn't need a chapter of navel-gazing and then looking up in yoga to see Angela Davis seated next to the author, nor did I need several alarming passages where the author seems to place herself and her "struggles" in the same room as those of Ruby Bridges, even while protesting that of course she's not nearly like that, but still, they had Journeys or something to that effect). Much of the book could have been entirely eliminated, and I'd hazard a guess it would be far more effective to look at this not JUST from the viewpoint of an incredibly privileged "having a weekend convertible is a totally normal thing to strive for, along with buying a vintage VW Bus off eBay" and (the worse offense in my opinion) the decision to on-the-fly match donations at a school fundraiser, because they can (anonymously, she stresses, and frets at the school BBQ when her husband trots off to do it -- are they being unobtrusive enough, will anyone pin this Good Deed on them?)
Not a bad thing to do, but writing about it....well, you said you wanted anonymity, but I guess not THAT much if it's going in a book with your name on it. It really negates the idea of "we didn't want to draw attention or be seen as saviors" when frankly, that action could have gone totally un-mentioned. What would it have done to the book to leave it out?
I think the author would have done well to gain voices from people in other walks of life who have made similar decisions, beyond rich upper-class folks who view their actions as ultimately benevolent. For a lot of us regular people without half-a-million-dollar-homes, it was like reading a lot of navel-gazing from someone for whom this was a little science experiment, starring themselves. And maybe it's not possible to write this kind of book without coming across as performative, but even then, choosing what you share publicly versus not is some wisdom missing (see: Darius's dad, the donation match, etc). I wonder how these people viewed this experiment and the author after publication.
There's a repetition of the idea throughout the book that white parents should show up, sit down and shut up. Is this book doing that?
Sometimes, learning can be private. I don't think this learning was fully digested enough to be public.
November 20, 2021
I gave this book one star more than I wanted because I have to admit certain stories about the history of education in the US, and insights into the life of Black communities were new to me.
This book is a quintessential Whiteness in its best. If you ever wanted to learn what is: White guilt and White savior, you can find it all there. While I don't doubt that author considers herself anti-racist it is actually funny to see how the racism and certain racial arrogancy, she's fighting against is present in a tiny bit everywhere in the book.
So we have a White mom who decided to send her child to the local, failing school for the sake of integration. None of the Black parents will ever do anything like that. They know if they will choose a school, based on the racial profile (or lower academics). They know if they will not get a great school, they will most likely have no money for private tutors and extra programs to get their kids prepared for college. Hell, the book starts with a Black friend telling the author not to make her kid an experiment of her "progressiveness".
Over the course of the book, author runs into a number of Black people who keep challenging her and asking her tough questions about her choice, and she never really addresses them. Sometimes she starts writing about her reasons but it never leads to the final reason.
And then the book is full of points like:
"Does Aliya [Ethiopian mom] befriend me more easily in part because I’m white and she’s invested in respectability as defined by dominantly white culture ?" - Well, have you ever considered asking her? Have you ever thought that maybe it's much easier for African immigrants to connect with a White person, rather than with an African-American? Have you ever investigated?
And then when this Ethiopian woman shares that she wants a more disciplined school and she believes it's more important than Blackness - the author is surprised. She seemed to be surprised many times. Even when the teacher [Mrs. Minor] left the public school and open her own private home-school for Black kids only (integration? never heard about it) and talks to her about that, she never investigated that. She never investigated if Black people actually want and need integration. if they agree with White folks about that. Instead, she knows what is good for them, and goes above and beyond in order to deliver on her faith.
Even when it will mean she will send a kid to the meh type of school. Oh, I forgot, she can always hire a tutor (which she probably will not mention in her next book).
This book is a quintessential Whiteness in its best. If you ever wanted to learn what is: White guilt and White savior, you can find it all there. While I don't doubt that author considers herself anti-racist it is actually funny to see how the racism and certain racial arrogancy, she's fighting against is present in a tiny bit everywhere in the book.
So we have a White mom who decided to send her child to the local, failing school for the sake of integration. None of the Black parents will ever do anything like that. They know if they will choose a school, based on the racial profile (or lower academics). They know if they will not get a great school, they will most likely have no money for private tutors and extra programs to get their kids prepared for college. Hell, the book starts with a Black friend telling the author not to make her kid an experiment of her "progressiveness".
Over the course of the book, author runs into a number of Black people who keep challenging her and asking her tough questions about her choice, and she never really addresses them. Sometimes she starts writing about her reasons but it never leads to the final reason.
And then the book is full of points like:
"Does Aliya [Ethiopian mom] befriend me more easily in part because I’m white and she’s invested in respectability as defined by dominantly white culture ?" - Well, have you ever considered asking her? Have you ever thought that maybe it's much easier for African immigrants to connect with a White person, rather than with an African-American? Have you ever investigated?
And then when this Ethiopian woman shares that she wants a more disciplined school and she believes it's more important than Blackness - the author is surprised. She seemed to be surprised many times. Even when the teacher [Mrs. Minor] left the public school and open her own private home-school for Black kids only (integration? never heard about it) and talks to her about that, she never investigated that. She never investigated if Black people actually want and need integration. if they agree with White folks about that. Instead, she knows what is good for them, and goes above and beyond in order to deliver on her faith.
Even when it will mean she will send a kid to the meh type of school. Oh, I forgot, she can always hire a tutor (which she probably will not mention in her next book).
July 25, 2021
Informative memoir/social science book about an upper middle class white woman in Oakland, California who decides to send her white daughter to the local public school which has mainly poor black and brown students. Martin weaves in some statistics and other reporting but the main focus of the book is her personal story and struggles with how to be anti-racist in a highly segregated educational system. I enjoyed this book but wished she had explored more larger systemic wide changes that would support students rather just her experience at this one school in one school district. A thought-provoking book for progressive parents.
February 5, 2025
Loved this book. I have so many thoughts and questions, so if anyone out there wants to discuss public education and intentional school integration… hit me up! See below for some quotes on the themes I’m thinking about.
Something small that warmed my heart was to hear the author (not a Christian) speak about the incarnational witness of the Christians in her life with such deep respect. ♥️ The choices we make on how we live out faith (and what we choose to ignore) really matter!
I was a little bummed out by the ending being about Covid times. I should have foreseen that given the publish date, but alas. The biggest criticism is that the author gave very little criticism about Emerson, their chosen school. The school was always described in such beautiful language. There really weren’t any ways the school negatively impacted you or your daughter that you had to work through? This made it seem less grounded and therefore didn’t tackle this concern many parents have head on.
“Every person has to come to terms with—even if just for themselves—the gap between what they believe, and how they live their lives. And if you happen to be a parent, the gap can feel particularly wide and meaningful, the rationalizations even more garbled and urgent. You’re not answering to just your own conscience, but to your children, too. They will want to know—they might already want to know—why you did what you did. Why send them to the school? Why make the so crushing effort to get them into clean clothes and into these particular pews on a Sunday morning? Live in this neighborhood? These people but not those? Why care so deeply about certain rules and let other things go? Kids ultimately care, not just about how you shape them, but also how your shaping of them shapes the world. I suspect that white economically privileged and well intentioned people have shirked our moral responsibility to the common good for decades under the cover of responsible parenting. And a time of eroding public institutions and soaring economic inequality, we have normalized private solutions whereby our children won’t have to endure the most broken American systems— public education, healthcare, the courts. By doing so, we’ve inadvertently created one of the countries biggest problems: increasing and unconscionable inequity. We act mystified by this inequality, all the while propping it up with our own choices” (18-19).
“So, why don’t White kids fall behind?”…
“Social capital…White people have all kinds of resources—material and otherwise—to make sure our kids get opportunities to learn. One could argue that privileged parents basically all homeschool our kids. We fill the house with books. We limit screen time… Yet privileged people often behave as if public institutions that serve other people’s kids will drain the privilege they’ve already invested in their children” (81-82).
“So much of parenting…is about letting go of your own half-conscious, too tidy dreams for who your kid will be and getting interested in who they actually are” (165).
“Choosing an integrating school is not so much a sacrifice as it is reprioritizing what matters in building a world we want our children to be adults in.” - Courtney Everts Mykytyn (301).
Something small that warmed my heart was to hear the author (not a Christian) speak about the incarnational witness of the Christians in her life with such deep respect. ♥️ The choices we make on how we live out faith (and what we choose to ignore) really matter!
I was a little bummed out by the ending being about Covid times. I should have foreseen that given the publish date, but alas. The biggest criticism is that the author gave very little criticism about Emerson, their chosen school. The school was always described in such beautiful language. There really weren’t any ways the school negatively impacted you or your daughter that you had to work through? This made it seem less grounded and therefore didn’t tackle this concern many parents have head on.
“Every person has to come to terms with—even if just for themselves—the gap between what they believe, and how they live their lives. And if you happen to be a parent, the gap can feel particularly wide and meaningful, the rationalizations even more garbled and urgent. You’re not answering to just your own conscience, but to your children, too. They will want to know—they might already want to know—why you did what you did. Why send them to the school? Why make the so crushing effort to get them into clean clothes and into these particular pews on a Sunday morning? Live in this neighborhood? These people but not those? Why care so deeply about certain rules and let other things go? Kids ultimately care, not just about how you shape them, but also how your shaping of them shapes the world. I suspect that white economically privileged and well intentioned people have shirked our moral responsibility to the common good for decades under the cover of responsible parenting. And a time of eroding public institutions and soaring economic inequality, we have normalized private solutions whereby our children won’t have to endure the most broken American systems— public education, healthcare, the courts. By doing so, we’ve inadvertently created one of the countries biggest problems: increasing and unconscionable inequity. We act mystified by this inequality, all the while propping it up with our own choices” (18-19).
“So, why don’t White kids fall behind?”…
“Social capital…White people have all kinds of resources—material and otherwise—to make sure our kids get opportunities to learn. One could argue that privileged parents basically all homeschool our kids. We fill the house with books. We limit screen time… Yet privileged people often behave as if public institutions that serve other people’s kids will drain the privilege they’ve already invested in their children” (81-82).
“So much of parenting…is about letting go of your own half-conscious, too tidy dreams for who your kid will be and getting interested in who they actually are” (165).
“Choosing an integrating school is not so much a sacrifice as it is reprioritizing what matters in building a world we want our children to be adults in.” - Courtney Everts Mykytyn (301).
July 29, 2021
I selected this as an advanced review copy offering from NetGalley because I am always on the hunt for good additions to my optional book review list for my Race, Class, and Schools seminar. I will add this book to that list because I can see utility in using memoir as a genre to introduce different ways of living in an accessible way to students. It can be useful to ground more empirical research and theoretical concepts. This particular book does cite sociologists and other anti-racist experts.
At core, the memoir showcases honest and earnest candor from a white mom in Oakland who ends up serving as school site council president at a majority black school in her neighborhood as she balances wanting to do best by her kid and all kids. It's not sociology. It is not a how-to guide. It is simply a window into someone's life.
I hated the random "13 things" or "a poem about" throwaway chapters and in general the book was way too long.
At core, the memoir showcases honest and earnest candor from a white mom in Oakland who ends up serving as school site council president at a majority black school in her neighborhood as she balances wanting to do best by her kid and all kids. It's not sociology. It is not a how-to guide. It is simply a window into someone's life.
I hated the random "13 things" or "a poem about" throwaway chapters and in general the book was way too long.
August 11, 2021
A worthwhile read (mainly for white leftists & progressives) on a devastatingly under-discussed topic--privileged white, middle- and upper-class parents divesting from public schools. I give Martin kudos for her vulnerability, even when her choices and phrasings become cringeworthy (probably because I relate and know I can be an obnoxious and overeager white, privileged person all too often!). Let's keep these difficult conversations going...
February 5, 2022
“Every person has to come to terms with — even if just for themselves — the gap between what they believe and how they live their lives. And if you happen to be a parent, the gap can feel particularly wide and meaningful, the rationalizations even more garbled and urgent,” writes Courtney Martin in Learning in Public: Lessons for a Racially Divided America from My Daughter's School. She tells the story of her family’s journey to live their values when choosing a school for her daughter. She discusses exploring different elementary school options in Oakland and the power that many privileged white parents wield to get their children into higher performing schools with more resources. She puts her own story in the larger context of education and systemic racism in America, helping readers understand what led to current inequalities.
I really enjoyed this book. I connected with Martin and started caring about her family, hoping her daughter would be ok when she got sick. I appreciated Martin’s self-deprecating sense of humor and honesty about her struggles. It was fun to read about a neighborhood that I’ve visited. I liked reading about her daughter’s amazing teacher Mrs. Minor and Martin’s sometimes awkward efforts to make friends with her neighbors across lines of race and class. I was impressed by her ability to reach out to a bulldozing white parent and listen to her story for an hour before offering helpful feedback and her work to include more diverse parents in the School Site Council. I valued learning more about efforts to measure success in schools, including the compelling fact that 80% of test scores depend on out of classroom factors, and organizations such as Integrated Schools (motto show up, shut up, stay put) that encourage white parents to focus on what is best for all children not just for their child. My one issue with the book is that I would have liked to read more of the perspectives of parents of color. Thank you Beth and book club for a fascinating read and discussion.
I really enjoyed this book. I connected with Martin and started caring about her family, hoping her daughter would be ok when she got sick. I appreciated Martin’s self-deprecating sense of humor and honesty about her struggles. It was fun to read about a neighborhood that I’ve visited. I liked reading about her daughter’s amazing teacher Mrs. Minor and Martin’s sometimes awkward efforts to make friends with her neighbors across lines of race and class. I was impressed by her ability to reach out to a bulldozing white parent and listen to her story for an hour before offering helpful feedback and her work to include more diverse parents in the School Site Council. I valued learning more about efforts to measure success in schools, including the compelling fact that 80% of test scores depend on out of classroom factors, and organizations such as Integrated Schools (motto show up, shut up, stay put) that encourage white parents to focus on what is best for all children not just for their child. My one issue with the book is that I would have liked to read more of the perspectives of parents of color. Thank you Beth and book club for a fascinating read and discussion.
December 5, 2023
I loved this book! I think it’s especially important for white parents of young children to read. I must say, I read this with a critical eye, always on the lookout, for the author potentially falling into a position of the white savior, but I was impressed by her thoughtfulness throughout. She does an excellent job of constantly examining her privilege, reflecting on her actions, and asking herself and her community how she can do better. I think that’s more than a lot of white folks are doing when it comes to this topic, or just existing within a white supremacist society in general, and how to actively try to dismantle that.
Structurally, I super duper appreciate that the book has incredibly short chapters. It really helped me fly through it! Aside from the fact that it’s just a very well-written and compelling book. I’ve got lots of pages dog-eared and lots of passages underlined. Glad I finally read this one!
Structurally, I super duper appreciate that the book has incredibly short chapters. It really helped me fly through it! Aside from the fact that it’s just a very well-written and compelling book. I’ve got lots of pages dog-eared and lots of passages underlined. Glad I finally read this one!
August 11, 2021
I laughed, I cried, I stayed up too late reading. I felt seen and challenged. The writing is great and the author is self-aware and honest.
December 17, 2021
What a painful read. Martin comes off as the archetype of an obnoxious, politically progressive parent who has converted to the anti-racist (read racist) religion. She decides to put her sensitive child who would thrive in an intimate school environment in a large public school to make some political point. She does this despite the school having horrible test scores.The author is obsessed with race, even commenting on her choice to capitalize the word 'White.' Every person introduced in the book is labeled by race. It's almost as if she focuses on race as much as segregationists did.
Her whole approach to human interaction was so off putting because of broad generalizations that she made about people she met based on their race. At one point she meets another white mom and says that they engaged in 'white mom culture' since they discussed admission and test scores. As if non white moms don't do the same thing? She also questioned if an Ethiopian girl befriending her daughter is a means to achieve 'success' which is ultimately a white stereotype. Why can't the girl just want to be friends with her daughter because she's nice or interesting? When did wanting to be successful become associated with white people?
Oh and her coronavirus phobic husband goes to a Black Lives Matter protest with hundreds of people because... it felt good? Thankfully she acknowledges that this decision makes no epidemiological sense. And teachers are telling 5 year olds that they can choose their pronouns and gender identity. It's as if she intentionally listed all the fads among the woke left.
This book sums up all that is wrong the progressive movement. I hope that those who read this book see this race essentialist movement for what it is: a parasite slowly eating away at our individuality and humanity.
Her whole approach to human interaction was so off putting because of broad generalizations that she made about people she met based on their race. At one point she meets another white mom and says that they engaged in 'white mom culture' since they discussed admission and test scores. As if non white moms don't do the same thing? She also questioned if an Ethiopian girl befriending her daughter is a means to achieve 'success' which is ultimately a white stereotype. Why can't the girl just want to be friends with her daughter because she's nice or interesting? When did wanting to be successful become associated with white people?
Oh and her coronavirus phobic husband goes to a Black Lives Matter protest with hundreds of people because... it felt good? Thankfully she acknowledges that this decision makes no epidemiological sense. And teachers are telling 5 year olds that they can choose their pronouns and gender identity. It's as if she intentionally listed all the fads among the woke left.
This book sums up all that is wrong the progressive movement. I hope that those who read this book see this race essentialist movement for what it is: a parasite slowly eating away at our individuality and humanity.
September 7, 2021
Learning in Public is a disquieting personal reflection of one White family’s bizarrely controversial and courageous decision to send their young 5 year old daughter to their local integrated public school to attend its transitional kindergarten. Why such a decision should be controversial or courageous or even worthy of being the subject of a book can be clarified with a simple explanation. The school is on the fringes of East Oakland, California it’s students are predominantly Black, Latinex, and Asian. The school is poorly funded and operated by one of the nation’s most dysfunctional school districts. It has the lowest rating a school can receive. I’ve learned a lot from Courtney Martin over the years and looked forward to this her latest installment. I was not disappointed. One thing is certain this will certainly generate a lot of heated discussion. Don’t look for simple answers here. There are none to be found. But you can look for honest, messy and often maybe a bit overly fraught self reflection as she shares the tumultuous decisions and experiences of striving to do the terrifyingly difficult thing of making the right decision for her first baby. The questions are hard. The answers never clear or certain for any of the people involved in this encounter. Well except for the kids. If only we adults could be more like the kids.
November 10, 2021
This book isn't for everyone. And even if you are the right person to be reading this, parts of this book won't be for you. This is a book that is so open and revealing that it can honestly be painful to look at in parts. You cringe for yourself, and you cringe for Courtney. But that didn't stop me from underlining 20% of this book.
I feel like the uncomfortable crux of this book comes down to a sly question in the reading group guide: "If you're a parent, do you think of your kid as unique and/or special? How has this question influenced your choices, and how have those choices impacted larger systems (which is to say, other kids)?
I feel like the uncomfortable crux of this book comes down to a sly question in the reading group guide: "If you're a parent, do you think of your kid as unique and/or special? How has this question influenced your choices, and how have those choices impacted larger systems (which is to say, other kids)?
March 4, 2023
I am still grappling with this book, part of me wants to wait to review it until I have more time to really digest all of it, but I am afraid I will forget parts, so here I go…
What I love about this book was Courtney’s honesty and introspection. Though, she definitely was in her head at times….I was a public school teacher for many years in very diverse Title 1 schools, both in Illinois and Southern California. So the schools had some similar problems. When students home life is unstable due to jobs, arguing in the home, instability of parents mental health, and a myriad of of other problems, it is hard for them to concentrate. My concern about this book was how she almost solely looked at the race issue and not the social class issue, poverty issues, and other factors that also change how a student does in school. School success is multi factorial and cannot be whittled away to race only.
I think Courtney tried to give some people the benefit of the doubt, where others she seemed to be very judgmental about. This really bothered me, since she picked and chose who she deemed worthy of grace and kindness. Courtney was extremely harsh about Christians, and yet many people in her story were people of faith. She said that they are the exception to the rule about people of faith and I am sorry if this was her experience, but you cannot put religious people in a box anymore than you should any other group of people. This really didn’t sit well with me, as she presented them more as caricatures rather than living, breathing, humans. So many Christian’s are sending their children to very diverse public schools, teaching, serving on the PTA and giving of themselves tirelessly, yet she completely judged them harshly. To write off a huge population of people, because of a few bad experiences is pretty judgmental.
Courtney was also harsh with people who didn’t make the same decisions as she did, other white moms, wealthy families, and white people in general. I don’t know if this is because she is white and rich too, she feels she has the right to discount others choices and experiences, but I think that she could have shared her opinions about wanting to serve and to send her children to the local diverse public school, without trashing others who did not make that same choice. I just think that she could have shared the same message in a kinder more well rounded way and still gotten across her message - let’s not abandon our poorer public schools! (Which I send my children to an extremely diverse public school and I am so grateful for it, so I hear you!)
I appreciated all her data and information on the history of desegregation in the public schools. As a teacher, these are important things that we learn in school to help us understand where we came from and how the schools got to be where they are today. I think she was very thorough in her information on that subject. Some of the quotations and poetry kind of took away from the main point and came across more rambling.
I really enjoyed hearing what her children’s school experience was like and working on the school site council. Those parts were interesting, plus all that happened with Covid and the challenges of schooling when both parents were working outside of the home.
Tons of interesting information in this book. There was a lot of thought and love and care for people of color and I think that is wonderful. I wonder if she had presented a less harsh criticism of some people in her book, like those whose school community was shut down, if it would have made her book more palatable. I just think Courtney was too biased in her assessment of other people’s intentions and the truth is, you don’t always know the what is going on with someone behind the scenes.
Anyway, fascinating book. I have recommended it, with the caveat that not everyone’s story is treated fairly in her book. But great food for thought and I do believe that Courtney had a heart for good and for the poor and I applaud her for that.
What I love about this book was Courtney’s honesty and introspection. Though, she definitely was in her head at times….I was a public school teacher for many years in very diverse Title 1 schools, both in Illinois and Southern California. So the schools had some similar problems. When students home life is unstable due to jobs, arguing in the home, instability of parents mental health, and a myriad of of other problems, it is hard for them to concentrate. My concern about this book was how she almost solely looked at the race issue and not the social class issue, poverty issues, and other factors that also change how a student does in school. School success is multi factorial and cannot be whittled away to race only.
I think Courtney tried to give some people the benefit of the doubt, where others she seemed to be very judgmental about. This really bothered me, since she picked and chose who she deemed worthy of grace and kindness. Courtney was extremely harsh about Christians, and yet many people in her story were people of faith. She said that they are the exception to the rule about people of faith and I am sorry if this was her experience, but you cannot put religious people in a box anymore than you should any other group of people. This really didn’t sit well with me, as she presented them more as caricatures rather than living, breathing, humans. So many Christian’s are sending their children to very diverse public schools, teaching, serving on the PTA and giving of themselves tirelessly, yet she completely judged them harshly. To write off a huge population of people, because of a few bad experiences is pretty judgmental.
Courtney was also harsh with people who didn’t make the same decisions as she did, other white moms, wealthy families, and white people in general. I don’t know if this is because she is white and rich too, she feels she has the right to discount others choices and experiences, but I think that she could have shared her opinions about wanting to serve and to send her children to the local diverse public school, without trashing others who did not make that same choice. I just think that she could have shared the same message in a kinder more well rounded way and still gotten across her message - let’s not abandon our poorer public schools! (Which I send my children to an extremely diverse public school and I am so grateful for it, so I hear you!)
I appreciated all her data and information on the history of desegregation in the public schools. As a teacher, these are important things that we learn in school to help us understand where we came from and how the schools got to be where they are today. I think she was very thorough in her information on that subject. Some of the quotations and poetry kind of took away from the main point and came across more rambling.
I really enjoyed hearing what her children’s school experience was like and working on the school site council. Those parts were interesting, plus all that happened with Covid and the challenges of schooling when both parents were working outside of the home.
Tons of interesting information in this book. There was a lot of thought and love and care for people of color and I think that is wonderful. I wonder if she had presented a less harsh criticism of some people in her book, like those whose school community was shut down, if it would have made her book more palatable. I just think Courtney was too biased in her assessment of other people’s intentions and the truth is, you don’t always know the what is going on with someone behind the scenes.
Anyway, fascinating book. I have recommended it, with the caveat that not everyone’s story is treated fairly in her book. But great food for thought and I do believe that Courtney had a heart for good and for the poor and I applaud her for that.
December 2, 2023
I don't know that I've ever had a more visceral, face-to-face encounter with how racism works in our society than witnessing the (mostly white, wealthy) parents at my kids' preschool choose elementary schools for our children. I sat in rooms where lists of "good" schools were passed around on sheets of paper, the implication being that all other schools were unworthy of consideration. I've been in text threads where people shared screenshots of GreatSchools.com test score ratings and shared tips and tricks for how to get into schools with high scores. I've seen the Larchmont Charter parking lot filled with Porches and BMWs for an open house and realized with horror where the energy and wealth of our city is going (and where it is not going). And I've been in more than one conversation where white parents spoke the quiet part out loud, straight-up telling me that a school was "90% Latino" or "really asian" as if this was all I needed to know about why they couldn't send their kid there.
So I've become radicalized by all this. A radical believer that wealthy people should participate in their local public school. A radical believer that we should have one education system for everybody. I've learned that schools are more segregated today than they have been at any point since Brown vs. Board, and that the peak of desegregation was in 1988.
If you have joined the church of school integration, then this book will be a nice Sunday service to nourish your soul. It's just the messy experience of one white mom doing what nobody else in her social circle or neighborhood is doing - sending her kid to her local school. I've followed Courtney Martin for a while so I trusted her to tell this story, and she bravely wades into a lot of the messy stuff that happens in real life, the actual mess of interracial relationships and interactions, the mess of living in a country where racism has worked its wreckage for so many years. This book is simple stories, but none of this -- doing the right thing in a racist society, letting go of a little bit of privilege or a lot of privilege, trying to be humble -- is actually very easy.
I found it super satisfying to have an expert storyteller reflect my experience back to me. The cringe-worthiness of the resourced parents in particular. I can't really tell you how much you might enjoy or not enjoy this book if you're not obsessing over school segregation the way I am. This book is about what everyday anti-racism looks like for one white mom, making the small but important choice of where to send her children to school.
So I've become radicalized by all this. A radical believer that wealthy people should participate in their local public school. A radical believer that we should have one education system for everybody. I've learned that schools are more segregated today than they have been at any point since Brown vs. Board, and that the peak of desegregation was in 1988.
If you have joined the church of school integration, then this book will be a nice Sunday service to nourish your soul. It's just the messy experience of one white mom doing what nobody else in her social circle or neighborhood is doing - sending her kid to her local school. I've followed Courtney Martin for a while so I trusted her to tell this story, and she bravely wades into a lot of the messy stuff that happens in real life, the actual mess of interracial relationships and interactions, the mess of living in a country where racism has worked its wreckage for so many years. This book is simple stories, but none of this -- doing the right thing in a racist society, letting go of a little bit of privilege or a lot of privilege, trying to be humble -- is actually very easy.
I found it super satisfying to have an expert storyteller reflect my experience back to me. The cringe-worthiness of the resourced parents in particular. I can't really tell you how much you might enjoy or not enjoy this book if you're not obsessing over school segregation the way I am. This book is about what everyday anti-racism looks like for one white mom, making the small but important choice of where to send her children to school.
January 23, 2022
this was painful to read in the way that books are when they take up your entire brain for a few days straight
like it's just so extraordinarily vulnerable and Honest and imperfect
this whole topic is something i thought a lot about before and still think about a lot now too
going to a hella rich, predominantly white college will do that to you
it's complex and i do not pretend that i do not own several kinds of privilege but it is Not the kind that goes "my family owns property on martha's vineyard and my 21k-person town has nine country clubs and consumers advocate named it the wealthiest community in the country and you've never been to a regatta?!?! oh em GEE you applied for FINANCIAL AID???? oh we always had people to cook and clean for us back home<3" way [darien ct this Is a direct attack] and anyways there are so many layers to living in a society [we live in a society], so many layers of overprivileges and underprivileges and just a lot of shit i've been thinking about lately because like. i haven't eaten good chinese food in eleven days. yes, i've been counting. i'm the only nonwhite person in my clinical group. a couple times a week i am the only nonwhite person at a sports practice. my friend [who is also an east-asian woman] were at the same lab table and our white male lab partners would Not Stop stealing our bones [i'm taking an anatomy class]
but yes fuck darien ct and thank you courtney martin
like it's just so extraordinarily vulnerable and Honest and imperfect
this whole topic is something i thought a lot about before and still think about a lot now too
going to a hella rich, predominantly white college will do that to you
it's complex and i do not pretend that i do not own several kinds of privilege but it is Not the kind that goes "my family owns property on martha's vineyard and my 21k-person town has nine country clubs and consumers advocate named it the wealthiest community in the country and you've never been to a regatta?!?! oh em GEE you applied for FINANCIAL AID???? oh we always had people to cook and clean for us back home<3" way [darien ct this Is a direct attack] and anyways there are so many layers to living in a society [we live in a society], so many layers of overprivileges and underprivileges and just a lot of shit i've been thinking about lately because like. i haven't eaten good chinese food in eleven days. yes, i've been counting. i'm the only nonwhite person in my clinical group. a couple times a week i am the only nonwhite person at a sports practice. my friend [who is also an east-asian woman] were at the same lab table and our white male lab partners would Not Stop stealing our bones [i'm taking an anatomy class]
but yes fuck darien ct and thank you courtney martin
December 23, 2021
This was a very interesting book that provides insight into public education in America. It reminded me a lot of the podcasts Nice White Parents and Southlake. It's pretty wild that sending your child to a neighbourhood public school is such a bold move in America that it requires a whole book. It was very eye opening to read about the amount of choice in American public education. School choice does not seem to be working well and this just doesn't seem like an issue that should come down to individual choice. As a Canadian, not everything in this book was entirely relevant but we do have similar issues in Canada, to a lesser degree. I didn't like the 'chapters' where she just repeated the same word or phrase over and over. The book is a bit self congratulatory but overall I think the author does a fairly good job interrogating her biases, and I liked the commentary from her Black colleague who reviewed the content.
October 2, 2022
As someone with a child who just entered the public school system in Washington, DC and has been thinking a lot about school integration, this was a great read. Courtney E. Martin has clearly put a lot of thought into this subject and it's obviously personal for her. Her perspective as a white woman reflecting on complex race issues leads to some cringiness here and there -- she overthinks everything to such a degree that feels almost defensiveness and performatively neurotic, with little value for the reader -- but on the whole this is a worthwhile chapter in the ongoing conversation about the lingering legacy and pervasiveness of segregation in our schools, and what white people need to be doing about it.
August 30, 2021
I relate so much to Martin, as another White progressive mom in Oakland committed to the Integrated Schools approach. I’m excited to talk about this book with friends and shift how we talk about schools specifically, and things we don’t know about (like the experiences of our Black neighbors) more generally. I would love to see an updated version five years from now that reflects on how Emerson changes over time and how Courtney navigates the space over time—it felt a little premature to write the book after only a couple years in. There were times when I cringed but I appreciate Courtney’s willingness to put it all in, blind spots and all.
December 4, 2023
A lot of the low ratings I saw for this book say the same thing I was thinking - the author is trying waaaay to hard to be a savior here. A lot of the things she rails against, she is also guilty of and it comes across time and time again. The COVID chapters were pretty interesting, knowing what we know now. The entire undertone of the book is how righteous the author is for sending her kids to the worst school in the city. And if other people didn’t want to send their kids there, she acts like they are the worst parents ever. Yes, for NOT wanting to send their kids to the worst school in Oakland. Really wild take.
March 12, 2022
An eloquent and honest examination of what it means to integrate our schools from the front lines. In a kind of "put your money where your mouth is" sort of way, the author, a journalist, sends her daughter to the local elementary school which is majority black and under-resourced. Even as she is there and relatively happy with the school, she questions her role as a white middle-class mother in a mostly black and brown school. Throw in a pandemic and there are many lessons to be learned about what ails our schools and our nation.
January 17, 2022
So much to unpack here. Would be a good book club to discuss. At times, I found the author rude & at other times, a well-researched guide. If she was farther along in the educational system with her own children, it would have had more insight. We choice our local public schools when many friends didn’t (for many more reasons then even discussed here)- could talk about this for days. Fascinating.
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