The Nightmare of Harper High

I haven't slept much this week and it's starting to wear on me.

The good news is that I did sleep for about five hours last night, which is more than I can say for both Tuesday night and Wednesday. I may have slept in my clothes, but at least I didn't wake up till around 3:30 this morning. I did laundry, cleaned the house, did some work, and talked on the phone to family back in the Midwest. My sister's recommendation, "Take Tylenol PM."

I don't think even Tylenol PM can banish the images in this video from my mind. In fact, I think I had a dream where I kept drowning in this massive, Olympic size swimming pool. Seriously, take a moment to check out the video. It's the uninspiring stuff of nightmares.

The footage, passed on to me by one of my colleagues, (who, interestingly enough, got it from a teacher who showed it to her students) is from an Oprah Winfrey show that aired last year. In the clip, students from Harper High School in Chicago swap spots with kids from Neuqua Valley High in Naperville, IL, thirty-five miles away.

There are the shots of the Neuqua kids being stunned by the presence of metal detectors at the entrances of Harper. The Harper kids are floored by computer labs and the huge Olympic sized swimming pool at Neuqua. Harper's pool is the size of a small living room and never has any water. The comparisons spotlight all the differences in what the two groups of kids are getting as far as facilities, technology, etc.

The heartbreak really comes though when they compare the academic rigor of the two schools. One of the Harper girls sits in a math class and is shocked by how much more difficult the work is, even though it's technically the same class that she's getting at her own school. She starts to worry about whether she'll be able to survive in college. (I hate to say it, but honey, no one is really expecting you to go to college, or if you do, to get to a top tier school).

I felt so awful for the mom who was crying at the end of the clip because she had no idea how wonderful other schools like Neuqua were and she didn't understand why her daughter's school is allowed to be so inferior.

I have an answer for her: Because your daughter's poor and black. Believe me, if she wasn't, her school wouldn't look the way it does.

I know that not everyone knows that schools like Neuqua Valley exist. But folks know that schools like Harper exist. Parents in rich areas know about schools like Harper because they want to make sure that their child doesn't have to go to a Harper. The way the system runs right now, I should only care about the educational opportunities of my own child, make sure my kids can go to a "good school" and screw everyone else's kids.

In fact, if those lazy black folks (like the mom crying in the clip) really wanted to, they could get off their asses, go to college, get a decent job and move to Naperville too, so their kid could go to a good school too, right? Yes, America is a meritocracy, we all have an equal playing field and if you work hard, you'll get a good education, the best free education in the world.

Yeah, we are good at telling lies in this country to rationalize the fact that we have a racist, unjust and unequal system.

I'll bet those Neuqua Valley kids and their parents were glad that they didn't have to stay at Harper permanently. Thank God this was just an experiment for the Oprah show, right? A little tour to see how the other half lives and then home to swim in the Olympic sized pool.