Who Better to Satirize School Segregation Than Students?
School segregation in the United States did not end with Brown vs. the Board of Education. One recent report, for instance, showed that New York City has the third most segregated school system in the nation, behind Dallas and Chicago. Last month another study proved that segregation in NYC schools starts at the pre-K level. Well documented, too, is the vast disparity between support levels for schools with majority black students and those with mostly white students.
But for a problem so well known, it’s strikingly rare to hear about it directly from the people most affected by it: students. That’s something that the high schoolers of Epic NEXT, an arts leadership program for youth run by the off-Broadway Epic Theatre Ensemble, have been tasked with changing.