School Takes New Tack on Work Study

Anand Giridharadas:

"I was raised into believing that money is everything," said Maire Mendoza, 19, crying at her own tale.

Her parents are near-invisibles in this city that they've heard called a city of dreams. They left Mexico before Maire was born and have toiled anonymously ever since -- her mother a baby sitter these days, her father a restaurant worker.

They raised their girls as pragmatic survivors. So it was startling when Maire came to them not long ago with an epiphany: "I now know that I don't want to work for money," she said, to bafflement. But her father, sensing his limitations, deferred. "You're probably right," she remembers him saying, "and it's because you go to school and you know things that we don't know."

Posted by Jim Zellmer at December 20, 2012 1:40 AM
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