The podcast bringing clarity to the problems facing America's schools

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The podcast bringing clarity to the problems facing America's schools

By Bri Lee

Podcast
Nice White Parents
The New York Times

Host Chana Joffe-Walt does an excellent job of grilling people.

Host Chana Joffe-Walt does an excellent job of grilling people.

This five-part miniseries is Serial Productions’ first new podcast since being acquired by The New York Times. The experience and quality of the team behind these hour-long episodes is obvious. There are none of the cringey sound effects you get in many longform storytelling podcasts these days, but the scene-setting is still subtle and impactful.

The host, Chana Joffe-Walt, is a veteran of This American Life, and does an excellent job of grilling people. In a podcast about race, class and schooling, a follow-up question as simple as “what do you mean when you say ‘uncomfortable’?” can have explosive answers.

Joffe-Walt chose one particular school in Brooklyn to tell the bigger story of why America is still stuck with a segregated education system. She spent years talking with parents, kids, principals, teachers and administrative professionals, as well as with black, Latino and white families. Making whiteness visible as a factor and influence, rather than accepting it as the “norm” from which anything else is divergent, is an admirable goal.

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In the case of Nice White Parents, it also brings clarity to a messy problem. The first three episodes are full of painful moments in which the “good intentions” of one particular group of white, wealthy parents just steamroll over the interests and needs of kids and entire communities.

If you think these issues aren’t shared by Australia’s education system, I’d love a passport to the country in which you think you live. According to a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development released in 2018, among OECD nations Australia has the equal fourth most social-class segregated school system.

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