The first school that used our reading software was in the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago, which in the early 90's had deteriorated into one of the nation's worst urban slums. Cabrini Green has since experienced a rebirth with new housing and new facilities, but, back then there was unfathomable decay in every direction.
I would drive to the school in the morning, observe the students using our software, and then head downtown to my law firm's offices in the Loop financial center. One day, as I was getting into my car in the Cabrini Green parking lot, a particularly sad song started playing on the radio. The mood of the song resonated with the depressing surroundings.
I drove out of the school parking lot and proceeded down LaSalle Street. In less than five minutes, I arrived at the office parking lot in my firm's gleaming high-rise tower. What struck me so forcefully was that the same song was still playing on the radio. Only now, the song completely was at odds with the vibrancy of the Loop environment I had entered.
While I always knew that the poverty of Cabrini Green was physically near the wealth of the Loop, traveling between both places in the duration of one short song created a cognitive dissonance that has never left my head.
How can we in America, a country founded on equality, abide by this vast disparity among neighbors? What role can - and should -- education play in eradicating this inequality?
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