My daughter started Kindergarten about ten years ago.
We wanted to send her to a very good “magnet” school and at that time the procedure involved getting up early and waiting for an announcement specifying which location among several would be the place to sign up your child.
It was a bizarre game of musical chairs played out with anxious parents, one of them usually out roaming in a car waiting for the word from their partner that told them where to go.
Once the location was announced, parents would make a mad rush to get there in time to be among the limited number of accepted applicants.
If this sound like utter madness.....that may be because it is.
Now, the destination is made clear in advance. Some measure of sanity has triumphed, I suppose.
But now parents camp out - rain or shine or heat or cold - for days. These photos above were taken on a Saturday morning. Most of these people had been here since Thursday. The sign-up time? Monday night at 11PM.
As the rest of the advanced world passes the U.S. by in graduation rates, test scores, and overall measures of the quality of public education, this kind of nonsense - having to camp out for days to get your kid in a good school - stands out as yet another testament to a government that has turned its primary aspirations towards enriching the already wealthy among us.
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