Friday, July 16, 2004
James Baldwin
Sol Stein, Baldwin's practically lifelong friend and editor, writes about him in Poets&Writers. I love the image of 1930s New York, when anyone could go to any public school they wanted to. I never knew that, and wonder how we went from a system where a determined kid could get a good education in the public schools to one where a few public schools get a lot of money and the rest are left to wither away, while the kids and their parents have very little choice, and those who can afford to send their kids to private school. At least, that's the way it is in my town. And the last one I lived in. Although oddly, not in the one before that, which had plenty of inexpensive private schools, mostly run by religious wackos, that make the high school in Saved! look like Ridgemont High.
Sol Stein, Baldwin's practically lifelong friend and editor, writes about him in Poets&Writers. I love the image of 1930s New York, when anyone could go to any public school they wanted to. I never knew that, and wonder how we went from a system where a determined kid could get a good education in the public schools to one where a few public schools get a lot of money and the rest are left to wither away, while the kids and their parents have very little choice, and those who can afford to send their kids to private school. At least, that's the way it is in my town. And the last one I lived in. Although oddly, not in the one before that, which had plenty of inexpensive private schools, mostly run by religious wackos, that make the high school in Saved! look like Ridgemont High.
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