Did you work up a sweat moving all those goalposts? Have a Gatorade.

Know where else gets a lot of white South Africans? Australia.

Here’s one.

Next? No, there other cults and suicides etc after Jonestown and before Heaven’s Gate.

Pandering. Even the Indians are sick of it.

Even if all the rich people were evenly distributed by school district, it would be at most a handful at each school. Most American children are going to school with children like themselves.

From all these American teen movies about kids like that, and all the commenters here saying that it’s true. The article suggests that it’s a common experience.

And frankly most Americans are now poor even within the context of American society. Most Americans are just barely getting by and are literally 2 paychecks from homelessness.

This is an excellent point. I’d been thinking it was more about perception anyway. Your classmate’s family might be living in a cheap motel room or even in their car, but you wouldn’t necessarily know it.

OK but what exactly is wrong with his writing? I’m not a fan. Just curious.

Out of 300+M, so like 3%. And we know they are concentrated in certain areas, not evenly distributed. So the math of it is that very, very few Americans can ever experience being the only poor kid in a rich school. It’s nowhere near a common experience. There are just aren’t enough rich schools. And no way no how are…

Excellent comment.

Even the family on Roseanne doesn’t seem poor. Working class and money is tight, but not going without meals or close to losing their house (a house! ). But even that was a rare thing to see on TV.

Why is Franny & Zooey poorly regarded? I’m not familiar with criticism of Salinger.

I’ve said this a dozen times already: The “only poor kid in a rich school” experience cannot be a common one because most schools and the kids in them are not rich. Yet loads of Americans think they lived it, when they cannot possibly have lived it.

I think the writer is trying to paint someone else’s experience.

Virtually everyone can relate to the experience of learning about money and class and realizing you’re on the middle or lower rungs.

You’re describing something else, not the “I was the only poor kid at a rich school” that so many Americans believe they were.

That doesn’t make you “the only poor kid in a rich school”.