The Wire, Season 4

Colvin:
You put a textbook in front of these kids, put a problem on the blackboard, teach them every problem in some statewide test, it won't matter. None of it. 'Cause they're not learning for our world; they're learning for theirs. They know exactly what it is they're training for and what it is everyone expects them to be. It's not about you or us or the test or the system. It's what they expect of themselves. Every single one of them know they're headed back to the corners. Their brothers and sisters, shit, their parents. They came through these same classrooms. We pretended to teach them, they pretended to learn and where'd they end up? Same damn corners. They're not fools, these kids. They don't know our world but they know their own. They see right through us.