Civil Society/Education/Theme

 Citizens of Philadelphia fight a constant uphill battle for resources for their public schools. The push of corporate money into charter schools is sapping the city's education programs of much needed resources, while concentrating the cost of students with special needs solely on the backs of the public schools. While parents self-fund their bids to oust corporate stooges from local school boards, and indifferent administrators hit the back nine by three o'clock with their charter lobbyist buddies, the lives of Philadelphia's future are often turning the pages of books that are twenty years out of date or more.

 This divide in class extends past the classroom to the college campus. Community colleges keep the trades filled with skilled workers, pouring apprentices into Philadelphia's expansive construction unions. The state colleges and Temple see to it that the middle classes have a shot at a better future, and UPenn sees to it that the heirs of the Main Line have a local option if they still want to feel superior to the unwashed masses.

 Private university presidents look to the profitability of the enterprise over the outcomes of their students or the prestige of their published research papers while adjunct professors teach crowded classes of students in ever increasing loan debt who they will see later that evening at their respective second jobs. Before clocking out to drive Uber.

 So what lesson are you hoping to learn?