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In reply to the discussion: A 13-Year-Old's Slavery Analogy Raises Some Uncomfortable Truths in School [View all]XemaSab
(60,212 posts)To make this not about race, my ginger cousin Jennifer went to Shasta High in Redding. When she graduated, she got accepted to UC Santa Barbara. She graduated, and now she works in an embassy in DC.
My next door neighbor's son Jimmy also went to Shasta High, which he flunked out of.
My cousin comes from a family and a background where going to college is expected. So far, of the five cousins in my family, three have gone to UCs, one did four years in the Coast Guard and is now going to nursing school, and I went to a CSU.
The family next door is a mess. The parents got divorced about 10 years ago and the mom passed away about 5 years ago. The dad is out on "disability," and as far as I can tell he's got the kind of disability that needs constant application of weed and Coors. Jimmy's sister is in 8th grade and can't spell the word "school." They're living next door because the dad's grandmother passed away and his mother inherited the house. They're all wastrels.
Many smart kids graduate from Shasta High, so Shasta High is not the problem.
Now I think that you could send the kids next door to Eton and they'd still be having serious problems, while my cousin could have been dropped into the middle of South Central and still have gotten good grades and kept it together.