Published: May 31, 2015 9:15 a.m. ET
Everett Collection
In “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” the young protagonist gripes about his adoptive mother’s efforts to “sivilize” him — particularly at the dinner table, where he observes that each dish is cooked and served separately.
“In a barrel of odds and ends it is different;” Finn says. “Things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.”
I thought about that line while reading Robert Putnam’s “Our Kids,” a jarring study of the growing opportunity gap between rich and poor children. America would like to think of itself as Huck’s “barrel of odds and ends,” a kind of democratic stew. But, as Putnam shows, our society is increasingly more like his adopted mother’s meal, with each dish cooked separately and cordoned off into different compartments on the dinner plate.
The young and poor in America ‘are completely clueless about the kinds of skills and savvy and connections needed to get ahead.’
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