For as much time and effort that Nikole Hannah-Jones has spent reporting on public schools and education policy, she evidently doesn’t know what education is, or its purpose.
In a sprawling and widely-read essay for The New York Times Magazine, the creator of the ahistorical 1619 Project chronicles her and her husband’s deliberate decision to enroll their daughter, Najya, in one of New York City’s worst public schools — and the entirely predictable, if shocking, results. (At one point, Hannah-Jones recounts her realization that her daughter thought she could do basic math but in fact could not, and that her writing assignments “were rife with uncorrected punctuation, capitalization and grammar errors.” Her teacher was simply not checking her work.)
