Link Banana

I’m a sucker for things like this. A small film crew took to the street of New Orleans and asked 50 people: “If you could wish for one thing to happen by the end of the day, what would it be?”.

(via Metafilter)

Making time to do things that I usually “don’t have time for” was a good idea. For example, Paul Tough’s (rather long) story for the New York Times Magazine about the challenge and hope for New Orleans schools is good. The most striking paragraph in a primarily optimistic article:

Pastorek’s optimism and determination can be inspiring, but he admits that for now, at least, there’s no proof that a portfolio model will do a significantly better job educating poor children than a command-and-control model. When I spoke last month to Diane Ravitch, a historian of education who has spent decades studying and writing about the often dispiriting process of school reform, she said that she was skeptical that a change in the governance model would solve the problems plaguing New Orleans’s schools. “The fundamental issue in American education — I say this after 40 years of having read and studied and written about the problems — is one that is demographic,” she told me. Poor children, Ravitch said, simply face too many problems outside the classroom. “If you don’t buttress whatever happens in school with social and economic changes that give kids a better chance in life and put their families on a more stable footing, then schools alone are not going to solve the problems of poor student performance. There has to be a range of social and economic strategies to support and enhance whatever happens in school.”

At Slate, teacher David Ramsey gives a great summary of the city’s luke-warm relationship with it’s suprisingly stellar NBA basketball team.

While there is no question that the Saints are the “city’s team,” it’s the Hornets who are more emblematic of New Orleans. There was no sudden miracle. The team was slow to return and hasn’t been given enough attention by the nation at large. Rooting for them is marked by a spirit of unvanquished optimism (these guys could win a championship) and realist doubts (these guys could be in Oklahoma in two years). They are thriving despite it all, but the future seems grave.