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Education

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eridani

(51,907 posts)
Wed Sep 16, 2015, 03:47 AM Sep 2015

Outraged Dad Wonders If a Public Speaking Class Is Only for Rich Kids [View all]

http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/09/15/outraged-dad-wonders-public-speaking-class-only-for-rich-kids

Back in 2006 media mogul Oprah Winfrey conducted a provocative experiment for an episode of her eponymous talk show: She swapped kids from Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville, Illinois, a well-heeled Chicago suburb, with kids from Harper High School in Englewood, an impoverished, violence-filled neighborhood on the city’s South Side, just 35 miles away.

It wasn’t only the Olympic-size pool at Neuqua Valley that shocked and angered the kids from Harper. They were stunned by the academic offerings—including more than two dozen AP classes, compared with the two offered at Harper.
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Nearly a decade later, Frankie Adao, a dad in Newark, New Jersey, who is active in progressive education reform efforts there, is wondering why his son is only being taught ELA/SS—a combination of English language arts and social studies—while his peers in other parts of the state are being offered a more plentiful selection of advanced-sounding courses: Google Hacks, Civics, Media/Public Speaking, Sports Statistics, Creative Writing, and a whole stable of other art, language, and music electives. That’s just at one school.

“A bit of jealousy came over me,” Adao wrote on his blog late last week about his reaction to seeing the schedules being offered at other schools. “I wanted for my son what their kids had! Fair and equal opportunity to a great education.”
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