Good Second Day, and the issue of Public Education

Today was a good second day at home with Seva.  She had some really good time on her belly, during which she was really able to arch her back and hold her head up for a period of several minutes, without any problem or difficulty at all.  She continues to show great observational skills, as she's clearly curious at all the thing within her immediate field of vision.  Finally, she's showing more and more signs of recognition.  For example, Jeannie and I went food-shopping at Trader Joe's tonight.  Jeannie had Seva in the front-loaded backpack.  At different points, I saw Seva looking at me in recognition, probably precisely because I wasn't holding her.  And again tonight, just a few minutes ago in fact, right after Jeannie finished feeding Seva, Seva just stared at me in recognition, then when I started talking to her and making noises she responded with a smile of recognition.

Tonight, we watched two back-to-back Frontline programs on PBS, both of them excellent: first, Separate and Unequal, then Omarina's Story.  Although each program was only 30 minutes long, each did a great job of concisely presenting the issues.  In Separate and Unequal, the intersection of race and class in the area of public education in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  In Omarina's Story, a vignette of the challenges, both educational and class-related, of Omarina Cabrera, a teenage girl of Dominican descent in New York.  Without getting into too much detail at this point and in this forum, I may very likely have the opportunity to serve as a member of a board of directors of a school, located in an urban, low-income neighborhood.  To say that seeing these programs tonight was timely and apropos is pretty obvious.  As I mentioned to Jeannie, the issues raised in the programs, particularly the first one, remind me of a book that I read a number of years ago: Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools by Jonathan Kozol.  I'll have to take a look at the book again.  I remember it was a very good read.