So I’m Australian, and here in Australia we have schools for gifted children, where admissions are based purely on standardised test results. Near the end of primary school you go to a special place to take a test, and the test is designed to measure logical thinking and mental flexibility rather than academic experience. And if you score highly, you go to a special school with smart students of all different backgrounds.
And I liked Spider-Man Homecoming in large part because Peter Parker goes to a “magnet school”, which I’m told is the American equivalent. And it doesn’t have any dumb jock types; the school bully is a little Indian brat with rich parents. It felt like a more modern take on high school tropes than all the high school movies where nerds wear bow ties that feel like the writer grew up in the 50s.
Anyway, half of My polycule says that magnet schools are all fake and only serve the rich. There’s no way a low income white boy from queens could make it into a gifted school in our world, based purely on academic achievement. I’m aware that the American system is less fair and money plays a much bigger role, but I thought there was at least a chance that a genius kid could beat the system and get into a good school with good grades.
Do magnet schools exist? Is it all just lies by the rich?
Aw man I’m gonna rub you in My girlfriend’s girlfriend’s face
My girlfriend has a fictive Petra Parker headmate who’s from a parallel universe and they tried to use her experiences at a shitty public school with cockroaches and asbestos as evidence that poor people can’t go to magnet schools. But I’m gonna tell them Petra Parker’s memories from a parallel universe don’t mean shit against a low income white boy from this universe’s Queens!
Keep in mind NYC is a different world than the rest of the country, but yeah I totally knew a bunch of people who were lower income who got accepted to magnet schools. In NYC at least, magnet schools are filled with TONS of lower income smart/gifted students. That part of Spider-Man was totally based on reality.
If you start to bring up parallel universes, there may be a parallel universe where Petra Parker goes to shitty school.
The animated Spider-Man movies has Miles go through an internal crisis where he tries to flunk out of one of these schools. Maybe Petra does the same or maybe chooses/doesn’t take the test to get in.
You can also have an alternate world where Petra gets excluded for some reason. Maybe the NYC bankruptcy goes worse and these schools vanish or a mayor puts a fee to them which Petra can’t pay for.