Learning in Public

Courtney E. Martin's memoir begins with a routine errand of parenthood: carrying her young daughter, Maya, in a carrier on long walks around Oakland, California. On those walks she kept noticing Emerson Elementary, a public school just down the street from her home. Her gentrifying neighborhood was filling with white families, yet most of them steered clear of the school, which served a majority Black student body and carried a poor rating. Her questions about why set her on a long search for her own moral footing.

The book widens from one household to the whole country. Martin examines her own fears and assumptions, and the candid conversations she had with other mothers and fathers weighing school choice. Many readers, she observes, have recently grown aware of ongoing racial injustice but are unsure how to move beyond symbolic gestures toward real change. She argues that the public school, a cornerstone of American democracy, is a place where that deeper work can happen.

The memoir offers a close look at the benefits and complications of school integration, along with the everyday pleasure of trying to live differently during a period of national reinvention. It also suggests that a single decision about schooling might send a family's life in a new direction for good.