Hi, black software engineer from Chicago's West side. From 1st through 4th, I attended a community elementary school where my older sister and I were the only s

Hi, black software engineer from Chicago's West side. From 1st through 4th, I attended a community elementary school where my older sister and I were the only students who could effectively read at all. The entire school was participating in a remedial education program where all the textbooks, 1st through 6th or so, broke words in sentences down by syllable. They barely practiced math, they were so focused on just getting the ability to read to be set in. This created immense ostracization for my sister and I. She graduated after two years whereas I stuck around for another two through fourth. To give you an idea what some of the parents were on, once a bunch of classmates, whom I somehow got grouped into, were held for detention after school in class in third grade because they were ruthlessly making fun of a girl. As we all mandatorily stood with our hands on our heads, I watched as her father walked her MUCH OLDER MALE COUSIN into the class, after school hours, and proceeded to order him to beat each of us up one-by-one for making fun of his daughter. I was second to last for a beating when my third-grade teacher finally returned to the class and stopped this assault. Mind you, my mother worked at the school and this older cousin knew this and knew her as well. I've also seen kids smacked around and chastised _in front of the class_, by their parent, for failing to fight back in a fight (which is kinda important to learn, but that ain't the way to do it). After years of this someone finally took notice and transferred me to a school in a historically Jewish neighborhood on the north end of the city where I was finally surrounded by children that were my academic peers, on a hour or so bus ride each day early in the morning. My first day of class in my new school was when I discovered there was this thing called cursive writing. I don't think enough people understand the situation for a growing child in the tougher areas of Chicago, this was just all in the 90s, things are worse now.