
The school prepping for apocalypse - fern12
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/t-magazine/bali-green-school.html
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frgtpsswrdlame
When I string these three sections together:

 _The local Balinese schools were all about learning “by rote,” he said; at
the other end, the traditional expat-driven international schools were a
“monoculture” of privilege._

[...]

 _Ambitiously idealistic experiments often collapse under the weight of their
own internal contradictions, and it is certainly possible to find these at
Green School: Here are mostly Western, affluent families, many of them
temporarily abandoning their comfortable lives for a metaphysical gap year of
voluntary simplicity (or life rebalancing or spiritual reawakening) in an
exotic stage-setting, at a school whose annual tuition (roughly $15,000 a year
for a sixth-grader), while a bargain compared to New York City private-school
standards, is far beyond the reach of the average Balinese. (Hardy’s original
vision of having at least 20 percent of the school comprised of Balinese
scholarship students was, Druhan noted, easier to scale when the school had 90
students. Today, about 9 percent of the student body are on scholarships.)_

[...]

 _Diamond was struck by how different it felt from the “traditional boarding
school model — you go here because your grandfather went here and then you’re
going to go to Yale and then work at this law firm and charge people $500 an
hour to argue about nothing.”_

It's hard for me to see this article as anything more than a wealth admiration
puff piece. I mean if you locate in a super cheap country, court the kids of
Yale graduates and rockstars to get $15,000 a year from them and give up on
your mission to also educate the poor locals then yeah, it's easy to build a
super impressive, large, expensive school. What's the point? These kids will
be the next generation's leaders whether this school exists or not.

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pdelbarba
I agree that it's a huge fluff piece. That said, I don't think there's
anything inherently wrong with setting up shop overseas like this. They're not
going there and trashing the place, first and foremost. Money is being brought
in to the area and the kids are getting exposed to the outside world more than
they would in NY or SF schools. It's probably not the worst idea anyone's ever
had regarding education.

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natecavanaugh
Is this an example of burying the ledge? The first few paragraphs tell me
nothing, and I don't want to waste a free article with an article that is
rambling from the outset.

Is this just me though? Why not get to the point and intrigue me to read the
rest of the article?

