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View ProfilesPublished December 6, 2023 at 10:00 a.m.
Just over a decade ago, Nikhil Goyal was a disillusioned high school student growing up on Long Island. He found his classes boring and irrelevant. Fellow students seemed less interested in actually learning than in getting good standardized test scores to earn entry into elite colleges.
Instead of stewing in his discontent, Goyal began to research the foundations of the public education system, as well as alternative, progressive models of schooling. That research became material for his first book, One Size Does Not Fit All: A Student's Assessment of School, published in 2012 when Goyal was just 17. The book made a splash, garnering mentions in the Washington Post and Forbes and praise from educational policy heavyweights including Howard Gardner and Diane Ravitch.
Goyal eschewed the traditional college path, instead enrolling at Goddard College in Plainfield, an innovative, experimental institution that allowed him to design his own course of study. While there, he found time to write another book, Schools on Trial: How Freedom and Creativity Can Fix Our Educational Malpractice, published in 2016.
After graduating from Goddard, Goyal went on to earn his master's degree and PhD at the University of Cambridge in England and to work as a senior policy adviser to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Now 28, Goyal lives in Burlington and served this fall as a lecturer in the University of Vermont's sociology department.
In August, Goyal released his latest book, Live to See the Day: Coming of Age in American Poverty, a detailed ethnography based on almost a decade of reporting. In it, Goyal chronicles the struggles of Ryan, Giancarlos and Emmanuel, three Puerto Rican teenagers living in Kensington, the poorest neighborhood in Philadelphia. Through the stories of the teens and their families, Goyal shines a light on the ways in which growing up in poverty affects every facet of a person's life, including their ability to succeed in school. Live to See the Day was recently named a Best Book of 2023 by the New Yorker.
Goyal spoke with Seven Days about his background, his books and what it was like to work for Sanders.
You wrote One Size Does Not Fit All when you were in high school. What inspired you — and gave you the confidence — to write a book at age 17?
I noticed that students were sacrificing their mental health, their well-being, their love of learning, for this very narrow pursuit of getting into a good college. I wanted to understand, what were the foundations of the system? How do schools operate in other communities? How can we change schools so that they can be more humane and child-centered and less competitive in nature? I spent a lot of time doing research, interviewing experts and scholars. I would just cold-email people and say, "Hey, I read an article you wrote ... Do you think I could talk to you for 15, 20 minutes on the phone?" The amazing thing I learned is that most people will answer your emails and many of them will agree to speak with you.
Why did you choose Goddard College?
I wanted to find an institution that would reflect my values and principles for education, and a few people suggested I look into Goddard. The very self-directed learning approach was something that appealed to me. As somebody who was very intrinsically motivated, I found that it was a perfect fit. My major was individualized studies, so imagine individualized studies at a place like Goddard. [Laughs.] There were some requirements in terms of math, English, science, social studies, but they really left it up to you to figure out how to do that best.
In Live to See the Day, the three teenagers you write about all end up at el Centro de Estudiantes, an alternative school in Philadelphia that is part of the Big Picture Learning network of schools. There's actually a Big Picture school that's part of the South Burlington School District. Can you explain the Big Picture philosophy and how it differs from traditional public school?
Big Picture Learning is a national nonprofit that has a network of dozens of schools around the country, and it is wedded to a philosophy that believes that children are natural learners and that learning can be done through internships and project-based learning and other forms of experiential learning. Students are coming in with severe academic challenges, not to mention all the other social and economic challenges — deep poverty, housing insecurity, trauma, sexual and physical abuse, domestic violence. For these students, it was one of the few places in their lives where they had a real sense of stability and dignity, where adults, advisers and counselors made sure that they were taken care of and respected.
I was blown away by the detail with which you recount the lives of Ryan, Giancarlos and Emmanuel. Can you talk about the reporting process that allowed you to paint such nuanced portraits, in which they share their innermost thoughts and such vivid and heartbreaking details about what it was like to grow up in Kensington?
I originally thought I was going to write an article about this school. Over several months, I realized that there was a much larger story here. I'd spent those initial couple of months of reporting firmly embedded within the school itself and not really venturing out into the neighborhood. As I became close with students, they began introducing me to their parents and their family members, and I started to do walking tours with the kids. And that showed me that I really had to broaden my fieldwork and my research. There was so much more at play here than what was happening inside the walls of the school building.
People ask me, "How did you connect with these kids, and how did you build a rapport with them?" And I always say that it took a long time to build that level of trust and respect. And I think the way I did it was consistently showing up — listening, asking questions, showing I cared, showing empathy, just basic human things.
Kensington is in many ways a completely different world than Vermont, but there are commonalities when it comes to what young people experience. Can you talk about some of that overlap?
I think rural poverty has its unique characteristics, but many of the conditions that children and families endure in the Northeast Kingdom, or in Bennington, or in Plainfield, are very much on the same wavelength as what children in Kensington, and in other urban neighborhoods, endure. There's a crisis of hunger in Kensington, as well as a crisis of hunger in many places in Vermont: people dealing with food insecurity, their SNAP benefits running out before the end of the month. When I think about the plight of these three kids [in the book] and how they had to endure evictions and homelessness and dilapidated housing, I can also point to many examples across Vermont where children are in similar conditions.
Some recent legislation passed in Vermont is aimed at making life better for children and families, such as the childcare bill and universal school meals. What are some other legislative actions you think the state could take that would have the most impact in terms of alleviating suffering for families?
I wrote a piece for the New York Times a couple of months ago about how, at a time of great paralysis in Washington, states are picking up the mantle and becoming these cradles of social democracy, and I think Vermont is certainly one of them — while there's much more work to be done.
I think there's a couple of things that the state should be doing. One is doubling down on investments in affordable housing. It's not sufficient to simply rely on motels to house unhoused people. There needs to be a structural, permanent solution to address housing insecurity and evictions. I would also love to see an expansion of dental care and mental health care and other forms of primary care in the schools so children and families don't have to travel dozens of miles away just to receive those benefits. My philosophy has always been that we tend to burden schools with the responsibility of fixing poverty and social ills when they did not create those problems, but children don't leave those challenges behind when they walk into school. People tend to trust, by and large, their local school, and I think it can be an organizing feature to bring in all those other social services and supports.
Can you talk more about your work with Bernie Sanders?
My very first day on the job was the day the American Rescue Plan was passed by the Senate. I got to work with my colleagues on a piece of legislation called Build Back Better. I worked on several pieces: universal free pre-K, affordable childcare, tuition-free public college, as well as the expanded child tax credit. When I was working on the bill, what was always in the back of my mind were my experiences in Kensington, in Vermont, because I knew that people were really suffering. It was very disappointing when Sen. [Joe] Manchin [D-W.Va.] decided he was going to pull the plug on Build Back Better. I think when [Democrats] have a trifecta again in Washington, all of those items will be back on the agenda and at the top of the Democratic wish list.
I used to teach in the [New York University] Prison Education Program, and when we had the opportunity to propose ideas, I talked to [Sen. Sanders] and said that I would love to bring something like this to the Vermont prisons. And so, working with the Community College of Vermont, the Department of Corrections, the Senate Appropriations Committee and many of my colleagues, we were able to secure $4.5 million for the first and most comprehensive tuition-free community college education program for incarcerated people and correctional staff in all of the Vermont state prisons. I was extremely proud of that, and I'm really excited to see that come to fruition over the coming years.
This interview was edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Live to See the Day: Coming of Age in American Poverty by Nikhil Goyal, Metropolitan Books, 353 pages, $29.99.
The original print version of this article was headlined "Policy Pro | Sociologist and author Nikhil Goyal talks education, books and Bernie"
Tags: Books, Senator, Nikhil Goyal, Live to See the Day, Bernie Sanders, poverty
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