The best moment during my trip around America was at a charter school in San Lorenzo, California. Talking to a group of children, I asked one of them, Michael, a slightly sulky-looking Hispanic boy, where he would be if he was not at this school. ‘Juvie,’ he replied. The other children explained that he meant Juvenile Hall or Detention. In other words, if he had stayed at a normal state school he would have made an early start to a life of crime. Here at the charter school, he had not. How and why had the school made such a difference, I asked him. ‘We spend our whole life here!’ he grumbled — no time for crime. His mother had made him go. Evidently a wise and determined woman.
•••
From Washington, I drove out to see the great Charles Murray, author of Losing Ground. It took me an hour and a half to find his modest house on the edge of a one-crossroads hamlet in the wide-open countryside. Murray believes his country, of which he has been so proud, is inexorably deteriorating. He regretfully recognises that not enough people are Libertarians, as he is, so things won’t change and the downward path is likely to continue. I ask him: has anything got better? He tells me he plays poker at a casino where all sorts mix. The good news is this: relations between blacks and whites are more natural — less tense — than 20 years ago. But that’s it.
•••
On to the celebrated Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The massive medical complex dominates the town. How is Obamacare working, I wondered? Well it has not fully started yet and it might yet be skewered by the Supreme Court before the end of the month.
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