Before the fourth grade of elementary school, I studied at the elementary school where my father taught. At that time, there were more than 30 students in a class, and although there was one class per grade, it was always crowded after each class. Now my father no longer teaches, and the school that admitted students in the past two years only has a dozen students. Parents of students in the town all want their children to have better educational resources, so they send their children to schools in the county or prefecture-level cities.
Batch after batch of rural schools have merged, and the school where my father used to work could not escape either. It merged with the elementary school department of my junior high school. Now the original site, like in the video, has become desolate. Weeds grow everywhere, and it is even more eerie at night. 👻
I used to watch American TV shows and thought that American students all lived in public schools, but I didn't expect privatization to be so serious. It seems that our country's crackdown on private ownership of educational resources in recent years is correct. Although it cannot completely achieve educational equity, at least it will not be as fragmented as shown in the video. According to my dad, the private kindergartens and primary schools in our hometown now have quotas for admissions.
My younger sister is now attending the best kindergarten in our area. Before going to this kindergarten, she was sent to another kindergarten for a year. That kindergarten is in the wealthiest village in our hometown, with a large area, complete facilities, and good teachers. But after my sister started attending the municipal kindergarten, she completely forgot about the previous kindergarten, except for occasionally mentioning it when passing by. The division between public and private schools in the United States is fragmented, and the same division exists between municipal and town-level schools in our country. It takes a lot of money to attend private schools in the United States, and attending directly affiliated schools in our country requires connections and money (of course, lottery admission is also possible, but the chances are very slim), and private schools also require a lot of money (although it is relatively less in the kindergarten stage).
Education stratification still exists at various stages. In the past two years, the country has made bold moves to cut down on tutoring institutions, making the fairness of the college entrance examination stronger. However, the period of shaping a person's comprehensive quality is during childhood, and the education in kindergartens and primary schools has a great impact on a person's cultivation. This is only the initial stage of education equity policies, and I hope my child can be in a relatively fair environment for quality education. When quality education is truly implemented at the grassroots level, rather than various formalism, there may be a possibility of achieving educational equity.
The situation in St. Louis in the video is very similar to that in the northeast, with the decline of industrial cities, the past glory, the outflow of population, and the legacy of abandoned buildings. I haven't been to the northeast yet, but I plan to visit during the winter vacation one year.