In upholding compulsory education, we trust, or at least hope, that schools are teaching our children basic reading, writing, and mathematical skills as well as the critical thinking and social skills that are needed for socioeconomic advancement—their own and that of their communities. But if ghetto spaces are, by definition, inferior in quality and rife with socioeconomic and political oppression, what it means to operate schools in these spaces takes on new meaning and challenges our widely accepted assumptions and presumptions about schooling.
