Go NBC!!! And my Sociological Imagination!!!

There's a new show on NBC called "School Pride" in which they take dilapidated schools and make them over (sort of like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, but Extreme Makeover: School Edition). The idea is that by changing the school, kids will then do better, because frankly they're being treated less like animals and more like human beings--by investing money, time and energy into the schools, kids then see that as investing in THEM and actually do better in school [AND let's put it out there...a lot of lower income schools are directly correlated with race...yes folks, racism is still an issue. argh!]. I love this from a sociological perspective because it's about changing the STRUCTURE and thusly changing a LOT of individuals. It's so cool that media is being used in such a positive way! I'll be watching NBC...I'll be watching!

http://www.nbc.com/school-pride/

**As an interesting commentary on race/gender may I proclaim that I am a big fan of NBC right now because I was in NYC with my family and I looked at a promotional poster for all the new shows coming out this fall. There was a really wide range of of people depicted--white men, black women [though I will say from what I remember it was lacking a bit in Asian/Latino/a people depicted]. There were two women who were CIA agents or something equally powerful and kick-ass. I looked across the way at CBS and saw...all white faces, except for like one or two. Anyways, go NBC for diversity!!!!! I haven't actually seen some of the shows so I can't say how these people are being depicted, but from the posters it looked like a decent start. Hoorah!