AHC: Four Day Work Week in US

Martin could talk about even many parents with "good" jobs are working such long hours they don't really have enough time for their families.

Now, I think a majority of American citizens did oppose long-distance school busing. But how else are you going to de-segregate schools? Martin could talk about this in the context of his whole theory of, we hate each other because we fear each other, and we fear each other because we do not know each other. And who knows what he'd come up with.

In his personal life, Martin may well have ended up getting divorced, and that may have been an interesting chapter, too.

The bus ride itself was more of an excuse than it was the real reason. Many parents thought desegregation would bring down school quality, even if the more polite ones would use excuses like the "long bus ride".

The entire city I grew up in, and its school district, were approximately 7 by 10 miles (11 by 16 km). I went to school in the 1970s, when busing was at its peak. The farthest I was ever sent away to "desegregate" a school was 6 miles (10 km) in Kindergarten/1st Grade (ages 5-7). 2 miles (3 km) was more common.

I now live in the "twin city" of my childhood home town. Race relations in this state are worse now than they were before about 1985 (but most people are too "nice" to admit it). The education authorities here gave up on forced busing and now use an "open enrollment" model: you can send your kids to any school in the state (even another district) if they have room and you can get them there. This system has led to greater stability but sometimes looks like a step backwards.
 
When I was in high school from 1977 to '81, we had a 30 minute bus ride in the morning and a 30 minute bus ride in the afternoon, just because the school district was slow in building another high school they probably needed to build and which they did build about five years after I left.

Our school had a small number of African-American kids, like maybe one or two a class. And as I remember, we just had one African-American teacher in the whole school.
 
and so affording a "good" school district, SAT prep courses, ever-increasing college costs,

besides all that, a feeling that if your kids don't start excelling in junior high or even earlier, they're going to end up working low-paid customer service.

the world is a meaner place, the world is a less open place
 
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