Thread by @Chris_arnade

absolutely shocking.... An educational divide being central to who we are? Who coulda seen this?

https://twitter.com/EricLevitz/status/1464235335177621506

My long standing point is Educational divide is most salient divide. It is the new cultural division.

That isn't surprising. We literally sort by education. That is what the system strives to do.

So it crosses older hierarchies. Like wealth & geography

That doesn't mean there is no difference between the Back row and Front row. Statistically by older metrics (wealth, geography) they might look pretty similar, but how they define themselves.
How they find meaning, is very very very different

This gets to my point why qualitative work (you know, talking and hanging with people) can be better than quantitative work (data!)

Data misses how people find meaning. How they find identity. How they construct a worldview. You see that talking to them

so to the notion, "the educational divide is just the educational divide" and not anything deep.

That is entirely wrong. How people find meaning, the worldview they build and inhabit, is entirely everything.

Far more important that eco class, or geography

Which is why, in my book and all my work, I have highlighted the racial and geographic diversity of the Back row.

Why I tried to show the mostly white rural Portsmouth is in many ways similar to mostly Latino & black urban Hunts Point