John + Jared | Pain & Promise | American Experience | PBS

Summary

The main theme is the author's career in Boston Public Schools, detailing his shift from a disheartened student to teacher and administrator following the 1974 desegregation order. Key subjects include the poor physical condition of schools built in the WPA era and earlier, the provincial and uninnovative nature of educational training, and the historical residential and racial segregation patterns in Boston, which he posits were not willfully chosen but a result of circumstance. The practical takeaway is that the Boston school system, both structurally and pedagogically, was in dire need of modernization and reform, a realization that motivated his career path.