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 he used to work at only has a dozen students enrolled in the past two years. 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 city.
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 location is deserted just like in the video. Weeds grow everywhere, and it's especially eerie at night. 👻
I used to watch American TV shows and thought that American students all live in public schools, but I didn't expect privatization to be so severe. 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 won't be as fragmented as shown in the video. According to my dad, the private kindergarten and elementary school in our hometown now have quotas for enrollment.
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 never thinks about the previous kindergarten anymore, except occasionally mentioning it when passing by. The division between public and private education in the United States is fragmented, and the same division exists between municipal and town-level education in our country. In the United States, attending private schools requires a lot of money, and in our country, attending directly affiliated schools requires connections and money (of course, lottery can also get you in, but the chances are very slim), and private schools also require a lot of money (although there are relatively few in the kindergarten stage).
Education stratification still exists at various stages, and in the past two years, the country has made drastic cuts to 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 elementary 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 quality education environment. 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.