![]() ![]() Ghosts in the Schoolyard asks-and answers-a number of important questions. This ghost story is a warning and an invocation to reach beyond what is readily visible and to uncover hidden narratives. But from the very beginning - with its title that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up at curious and nervously anticipatory attention and its cover, depicting a spectral student floating through darkened halls-it is clear that Ghosts in the Schoolyard is about more than the shuttering of a building. ![]() On the face of things, Ghosts in the Schoolyard is a story about school closings in Chicago. Which brings us to why Ewing’s new book is both so fittingly titled and such an urgent and important intervention into the discourse around education policy, the so-called achievement gap, and “failing” schools. ![]() Even if you feel it, convincing others of the existence of racism’s spectre can be an uphill battle. In its invisibility, racism is also like Ghosts in the Schoolyard‘s titular apparitions-often hard to see, but impossible to ignore or deny for those who feel its presence. We know it to be deeply damaging, even deadly. It is especially apt because, as with racism, invisible though electric current in water may be, those who have been touched by it feel its sting acutely. It is an apt simile, penned with the deftness of a skilled writer and the trenchant insight of a trained sociologist. Ewing in her introduction to Ghosts in the Schoolyard (p. “Like an electrical current running through water, race has a way of filling space even as it remains invisible,” writes sociologist Eve L. Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side ![]()
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