Everybody, according to an old saying of unknown but apparently wise origin, is an expert at raising other people’s kids.

One child of recent national interest is the daughter of Nikole Hannah-Jones, the journalist who led “The 1619 Project,” a controversial and Pulitzer Prize-winning reexamination of American history through the lens of slavery, instead of treating that American horror story as a sidelight.

In a conversation that occurs in middle-class Black households nationwide, including mine, Hannah-Jones and her husband, Faraji Hannah-Jones, decided to take a bold, unconventional step: They enrolled their daughter Najya in a local public school next to a public housing development in their Brooklyn neighborhood.

The intention, she wrote in a long essay published last week in The New York Times Magazine, was “to challenge New York City’s separate and unequal school system.”

Despite the civil rights revolution, Hannah-Jones wrote, most Black students “languish in the type of schools that the law was supposed to have eradicated.”

“So, like the generations of Black parents who came before us,” she continued, “Faraji and I felt an obligation to make educational decisions based on the collective good and not just our individual advantage.”

They made that decision 10 years ago. Now, as she revealed in the Times essay, the family decided to reverse their earlier decision and move Najya to, yes, a private school.

What changed their minds? Najya.

Her mom recalls how Najya, now 16, said something when picked up at school one day that caused her to have second thoughts.

“Did you know my school was bad like this when you decided to put me here?” Najya........

© Chicago Tribune