The Boys of Baraka

I stumbled across this documentary at the Baltimore County Public Library. The filmmakers follow a group of 20 twelve-year-old boys from Baltimore City Schools to a school in Kenya, where they stay for one year. It's really amazing to see the transformation that takes place with the boys, and also sad that only select small groups are invited to participate in programs like these, while the majority of the population is left to deal with the chaos of their regular schools and impoverished neighborhoods.

While the Baraka School is a great idea and a great portrayal of the capabilities of impoverished African American youth, I think we should be focusing on ways to take the chaos out of all public schools, rather than creating order in a few experimental schools. While the film is great, it's just not feasible to send our kids to rural areas throughout the world in order to provide a spacious, peaceful environment for them to learn and grow in. What happened to all the kids that applied to the Baraka School but didn't get in? Did they fall through the cracks?