Harper High School and the Role of Education
For this blog post, I chose to listen to a podcast from This American Life on how one high school dealt with gun violence (part one here , part two here ). The reporters for this story embedded themselves in the school for a full semester, recording the perspectives of staff and students, documenting everyday conversations and meetings, and charting the events that unfolded over the course of the year. I would really recommend listening to it if you get the chance—hearing individual people’s stories, often through their own voices, grounds these abstract concepts in a really moving way, and because they were offered so much access to the day-to-day happenings of the school, the reporters picked up on a lot really important and interesting nuances that a more typical news story might not have. The story of this school is important in its own right, but it also highlights some really central concepts in education justice as a whole. Harper High School, located on the South Side of C...