All Walks of Life

 

 

We’ve been blessed to send our kids to two great public schools, Penn Alexander and Central High. Both are, for Philly schools, very well resourced, which is come in handy as we’ve often needed to lean on the extra supports for various special needs and intervention moments. Both are academically rigorous, as evidenced by high test scores as well as the resolve and professionals of the educators there. 

Importantly and not coincidentally, both are diverse communities. There has been some justifiable concern that racial and ethnic diversity is declining, particularly if it continues to do so. At the moment, both schools remain very racial and ethnically mixed, which we are glad for given the fact that we are ourselves a racially mixed family and value our kids being among diverse company. 

Another critical yet sadly rare type of diversity is income diversity. Indeed, it is intentionally rare, because in this country we tend to set up our local laws to discourage wide ranges of household income levels to co-exist in the same school catchment zone. So, as elusive as it is to send your kid to a school where there is true racial and ethnic diversity, perhaps rarer still is a school where socio-economic diversity exists. 

Things change, especially in cities, but at this moment in time, we experience that at our kids’ schools. They have friends whose parents are blue collar and professional, who have no cars and fancy cars, who have never gotten on an airplane and who have second homes.

Of course what you learn in the classroom is important for preparing you for career and life. But I would argue that who you learn with is just as important. And part of what is important about that is being alongside and empathizing with people who come from different walks of life, who are differently resourced and whose world view is shaped by that scarcity or abundance. We are grateful for what we have as a family, including community with people who have far more and far less than us.