How important are "good" schools to you?

In my corner of the internet, there has been a lot of discourse over the past few weeks about Nikole Hannah-Jones.

A decade ago Jones, author of the Pulitzer-prize winning (but factually contested) 1619 Project, wrote a big article in the New York Times Magazine about choosing to send her daughter to a dismally rated school in Brooklyn whose student body is overwhelmingly Black and Latino and low income. Hannah-Jones, who is Black herself and was bussed to largely white schools growing up, did this out of a sense of obligation to be a "part of the solution" to America's unequal and heavily segregated system of education. She imagined that as educated upper middle class professionals, she and her husband would be powerful advocates for the neglected children of P.S. 307, ensuring they got the resources and attention that kids in affluent white areas get.

Well, a few weeks ago she wrote another big thing confessing her regrets. Her daughter, Najya, now 16, feels she was robbed of a decent education. After choosing to attend a high school with a far more affluent student body, she was blindsided by the academic rigor for which her elementary and middle school years had so poorly prepared her.

Anyway, you can imagine the response to NHJ's confession. She's already a polarizing figure, so plenty delighted in kicking her while she's down. The gentler takes described her decision to send her kid to a poorly performing school as naive, the harsher ones denounced it as child abuse.

For what it's worth, I think Najya will be fine. This is a girl who is upset that she hasn't been challenged enough. I'd be curious to hear from her again in 10 years, when she's 26 and presumably in the workforce. Will she look back at her gritty elementary and middle school experiences as an unmitigated catastrophe or will there be aspects of it that she retrospectively appreciates? Did it give her thicker skin or insights about the world that elude her more scholastically pampered colleagues?

I appreciated the response from politics writer Matt Yglesias, who grew up attending exclusive prep schools in New York but now sends his kid to a predominantly low-income public school in Washington D.C. Although he doesn't specify the school, it's clear from his description that it's not nearly as disadvantaged as the one Najya attended. There is still a "critical mass of affluent, educated, engaged parents." Nevertheless, his point is that it's probably not the best school based on conventional metrics, but a) it's good enough and b) there are very real benefits to growing up in contact with a broader range of mankind than you'll find at the "best" schools.

I'm coming up on my 20th reunion for Montclair High School in Montclair, N.J. (06 in the mix!). During my years there (2002-06), MHS was the ideal educational product for cosmopolitan liberals. It was racially and economically diverse (I recall my freshman year history teacher claiming the school was 48% black, 42% white & 10% Hispanic/Asian) but also academically high-achieving. The classes themselves were not nearly so integrated. The honors courses were much whiter than the regular courses and the social scene was relatively segregated.

Looking back, I struggle to appreciate the supposedly excellent academic experience at MHS, to which I was largely indifferent or contemptuous. Some of the teachers were good, others bad, but I don't think any of these classes, from honors chemistry to AP world history, had much effect on my personal and professional trajectory.

In part, this is because I am lucky to come from a family that instilled in me the interests and skills that formed my career (e.g. my dad is a journalist!). That is certainly a privilege, and not necessarily in the woke way that it is often used. Plenty of kids whose parents have blue collar professions are introduced early in life to skills or vocations that help them make good livings regardless of whether they excel in school or go to college.

Anyway, what I most appreciated about MHS were the decidedly non-elite experiences. Like Algebra I freshman year. Over the objections of my guidance counselor, I chose "regular" math, as opposed to honors. I didn't get any better at math that year; the class was a total joke where we mostly hung out. But it was certainly a learning experience. Not only was I the only white kid, but I was a white kid who'd just spent the previous four years at a small private school in Paris, France. I remember a considerable amount of time was consumed by freestyle battles where guys accused each other of wearing hand-me-downs or donning "unauthenticated" jerseys. I probably learned more vocabulary and culture in that nonsense class than I learned in my actual English class (final grade: C) that year.

I'm also thankful for the fraudulent physical education program at MHS where we would change into gym clothes to do nothing. Particularly memorable was Coach Sanders, my gym teacher who was arrested sophomore year for embezzling money from his summer job at a local pool. I once asked Sanders why he was penalizing me for forgetting my change of gym clothes while many others — particularly young women — flaunted the rules without sanction. "It's called favoritism, Jack," he said matter-of-factly. It was an important life lesson. Meritocracy is the exception, not the rule.

That's not to say that I want my own daughter to take math classes where she doesn't learn math or be taught by a corrupt lunatic. But I also don't think academics are the most important part of growing up. I want my child to be curious and open-minded, but I have no intention of pressuring her to be a straight-A student. Being able to show up and pass high school is a reasonable expectation and a good life lesson, but there's no reason to stress about her excelling in all of these different subjects. All you have to do is find something you're interested and work hard at it. That could be almost anything.

I don't fondly recall the genuinely elite side of MHS. This was the era when seemingly nobody questioned the idea that success in the 21st century required a college degree. Even middling students like me got caught up in the idea, convincing ourselves it mattered greatly which state university we went to. That added a lot of needless stress and probably burdened a lot of kids with debt that could have been avoided if they'd just gone to Rutgers (I'm still glad I went to Wisconsin!). To be an ambitious high schooler (not me) is brutal. A lot of these kids spend every waking hour studying, working much harder than their own parents. I don't think that's healthy.

Two decades later, our daughter is a second grader in the highly-rated Wissahickon School District in Montgomery County, Pa., outside of Philadelphia. It's considered a major advantage of living here, although when I hear people invoke its high ranking I tend to (internally) roll my eyes and grumble about how it lacks the one thing about formal education that really excites me: foreign language immersion.

The good news, from my perspective, is that the vibe isn't overwhelmingly elite. Sure, it's got a fair bit of racial and ethnic diversity (40% nonwhite) but perhaps more importantly there is a big economic and cultural spectrum, with a healthy representation of white and blue collar occupations. A woman cutting my hair recalled attending both neighboring Upper Dublin High School and Wissahickon High School and said she felt far more comfortable getting dropped off in her dad's beat up truck at Wiss. That made me happy.

That's all I've got for today! Please forward to friends and family and encourage them to subscribe to the newsletter. And if you truly appreciated this article, you can show your appreciation by buying me a cup of coffee.