School Beaumont High School, St Louis, Missouri Fertility rate 2 Life expectancy at birth 78 Population on less than $2 a day 0% Primary age children not in school 3% Youth literacy 99.7% This school really reflected the reality of downtown St Louis, which is that it’s black. The district was extraordinary – like pictures I had seen of Detroit. You could drive through block after block of houses that were almost falling down. The school was a large, fairly old and traditional building, but the headmaster was very enthusiastic and I got a sense that the kids and teachers got on well. This was a proper lesson. It was geometry and it was way over my head. I visited a few state schools in this district of St Louis, and the only one that had more than a handful of any white students at all was the Gifted and Talented school.

Photograph: Julian Germain