If ever you are challenged by someone who says the media are lost and worthless now, you have only to refer to the Boston Globe's "Valedictorian Project."
Yes, there was the Spotlight and its revelations about Catholic priests, but this piece is far more widely applicable.
The jist of the report is that top students graduating from disadvantaged city schools in Boston, the valedictorians, did not rise above their humble origins through the alchemy of public education and enter the upper classes.
They, most often, failed.
The implications for affirmative action are obvious.
The implications for America as the land of opportunity are dismal.
The idea of selling aspiring young people on a dream which turns out to be a fraud is repellent, but important.
And it is all so obvious to anyone who has worked among the folks this story follows.
Of the more than 100 valedictorians who said they wanted to to medical school after high school, followed over the years by the Globe, only two are in medical school, both at offshore, non American medical schools.
The take home is that without a family to help navigate, support and guide a young person, the rise from one class to the next is doomed. No Great Expectations story of Pip here. These kids sink beneath the waves, overwhelmed by all that they cannot see or understand.
It is a sobering tale.
It is also such a relief to see real reporting, amid all the stories about what Trump is thinking, what Mueller might be up to, what impact the latest Tweet will have on public opinion polls, whether tariffs are helping or hurting the economy.
This is a story rooted in actual experience, and it must have been the product of hours upon hours of hard work, pursuing people, getting their stories, shaping it.
The implications are important. There are uncomfortable truths.
Yes, there was the Spotlight and its revelations about Catholic priests, but this piece is far more widely applicable.
The jist of the report is that top students graduating from disadvantaged city schools in Boston, the valedictorians, did not rise above their humble origins through the alchemy of public education and enter the upper classes.
They, most often, failed.
The implications for affirmative action are obvious.
The implications for America as the land of opportunity are dismal.
The idea of selling aspiring young people on a dream which turns out to be a fraud is repellent, but important.
And it is all so obvious to anyone who has worked among the folks this story follows.
Of the more than 100 valedictorians who said they wanted to to medical school after high school, followed over the years by the Globe, only two are in medical school, both at offshore, non American medical schools.
The take home is that without a family to help navigate, support and guide a young person, the rise from one class to the next is doomed. No Great Expectations story of Pip here. These kids sink beneath the waves, overwhelmed by all that they cannot see or understand.
It is a sobering tale.
It is also such a relief to see real reporting, amid all the stories about what Trump is thinking, what Mueller might be up to, what impact the latest Tweet will have on public opinion polls, whether tariffs are helping or hurting the economy.
This is a story rooted in actual experience, and it must have been the product of hours upon hours of hard work, pursuing people, getting their stories, shaping it.
The implications are important. There are uncomfortable truths.
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