Podcast 'White parents dominate underprivileged school'

Tekst redactie Onderwijsblad - Lisette Douma - 16 januari 2021 - Minder dan een minuut om te lezen

Image: New York Times

'Our school is now very high in the charts', says an eleven-year-old boy with pride. His school, the School for International Studies (sis), previously fared sadly in a comparative ranking of high schools in the US. Scores have skyrocketed since 2015 kids who are white like him attend Brooklyn's "disadvantaged school" in September XNUMX.

An older, professional fundraiser, raised $18. 'Black' parents can't compete with the sale of homemade cakes

It is also a well-known phenomenon in the Netherlands: white parents who unite in a parent initiative and send their children to the nearby black school with good intentions. This does not always go well in the Netherlands: immigrant parents whose children have been going to school for some time experience the well-intentioned, empowered cargo bike parents as intimidating, often as domineering.

Patronizing

In the five-part The New York Timespodcast Nice White Parents that effect is magnified. Journalist Chana Joffe-Walt paints an uncomfortable, patronizing picture. For example, the white parents stipulate that the sis becomes bilingual, otherwise they will not come. But the school is already multilingual: a third of the children at the school speak Spanish, 10 percent speak Arabic. The white parents don't think that's 'bilingual', no: the school should be French.

cakes

To achieve this, they are starting a fundraiser. A parent who is a professional fundraiser has already raised $18 before the campaign even started. The 'black' parents who normally sell homemade cakes at fundraising campaigns can't compete with that.

Nice White Parents can be listened to via podcast apps or newyorktimes.com/podcasts