Educational Inequity

4min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

When we say educational inequity, it's the fact that just by virtue of who you were born to and where you landed up and growing up, you're going to have very different sets of things coming. Those at the top of the economic distribution are spending a lot more on their kids than those at the bottom. And because our schools are so segregated, both economically and by race and ethnicity, that the kinds of resources that they get then at school are also different.

Raise yourself up by your own bootstraps. This is a refrain we hear all the time, especially as Americans catechized in the dogma of personal responsibility. But what if some people don’t have bootstraps? What if some don’t even have boots?

This week David and Curtis welcome educational expert and Rice University sociology professor Ruth López Turley. Raised on the U.S./Mexico border, Ruth’s own educational story is fascinating and lends special weight to her observations about educational equity and how the scriptures (including Mary’s Magnificat) might lead us to some surprising and challenging conclusions.

Show Notes:

-$50M Kinder Foundation grant will expand Kinder Institute’s work to solve challenges facing Houston

-Claire Cain Miller, Josh Katz, Francesca Paris and Aatish Bhatia (The New York Times) - Vast New Study Shows a Key to Reducing Poverty: More Friendships Between Rich and Poor

-Cynthia M. Allen - Want economic mobility? Make friends at church

Follow Curtis’ work at RedeemingBabel.org

Produced by Kris Carter