70 OCTOBER 2019 THE ATLANTIC
middle school, if you fail middle school you fail high school, if you fail high
school you fail college, if you fail college you fail life.”
We were back to the perversions of meritocracy. But the country’s politics
had changed dramatically during our son’s six years of elementary school.
Instead of hope pendants around the necks of teachers, in one middle-school
hallway a picture was posted of a card that said, “Uh-oh! Your privilege is
showing. You’ve received this card because your privilege just allowed you to
make a comment that others cannot agree or relate to. Check your privilege.”
The card had boxes to be marked, like a scorecard, next to “White,” “Chris-
tian,” “Heterosexual,” “Able-bodied,” “Citizen.” (Our son struck the school off
his list.) This language is now not uncommon in the education world. A teacher
in Saratoga Springs, New York, found a “privilege-refl ection form” online with
an elaborate method of scoring, and administered it to high-school students,
unaware that the worksheet was evidently created by a right-wing internet
troll—it awarded Jews 25 points of privilege and docked Muslims 50.
The middle-school scramble subjected 10- and 11-year-olds to the dictates
of meritocracy and democracy at the same time: a furiously competitive con-
test and a heavy-handed ideology. The two systems don’t coexist so much
as drive children simultaneously toward opposite extremes, realms that are
equally inhospitable to the delicate, complex organism of a child’s mind. If
there’s a relation between the systems, I came
to think, it’s this: Wokeness prettifi es the suc-
cess race, making contestants feel better about
the heartless world into which they’re pushing
their children. Constantly checking your privi-
lege is one way of not having to give it up.
On the day acceptance letters arrived at
our school, some students wept. One of them
was Marcus, who had been matched with a
middle school that he didn’t want to attend.
His mother went in to talk to an administrator
about an appeal. The administrator asked her
why Marcus didn’t instead go to the middle
school that shared a building with our school,
that followed the same progressive approach
as ours, and that was one of the worst-rated
in the state. Marcus’s mother left in fury and
despair. She had no desire for him to go to the
middle school upstairs.
Our son got into one of the “good” mid-
dle schools. Last September he came home
from the fi rst day of school and told us that
something was wrong. His classmates didn’t
look like the kids in his elementary school.
We found a pie chart that broke his new
school down by race, and it left him stunned.
Two-thirds of the students were white or
Asian; barely a quarter were black or Latino.
Competitive admissions had created a segre-
gated school.
His will be the last such class. Two years
ago, Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a new ini-
tiative to integrate New York City’s schools.
Our district, where there are enough white
families for integration to be meaningful, was
chosen as a test case. Last year a commit-
tee of teachers, parents, and activists in the
district announced a proposal: Remove the
meritocratic hurdle that stands in the way of
equality. The proposal would get rid of com-
petitive admissions for middle school—grades,
tests, attendance, behavior—which largely
accounted for the racial makeup at our son’s new
school. In the new system, students would still rank
their choices, but the algorithm would be adjusted to
produce middle schools that refl ect the demography
of our district, giving disadvantaged students a prior-
ity for 52 percent of the seats. In this way, the district’s
middle schools would be racially and economically
inte grated. De Blasio’s initiative was given the slo-
gan “Equity and Excellence for All.” It tried to satisfy
democracy and meritocracy in a single phrase.
I went back and forth and back again, and fi nally
decided to support the new plan. My view was gratu-
itous, since the change came a year too late to aff ect
our son. I would have been sorely tested if chance had
put him in the fi rst experimental class. Under the new
system, a girl at his former bus stop got matched with
her 12th choice, and her parents decided to send her
to a charter school. No doubt many other families
will leave the public-school system. But I had seen
our son fl ourish by going to an elementary school