Customer Reviews

The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America

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1 star:		(6)

 

 

It is noted that those who make the choice to attack the book on the basis of their own ideological biases, seem to have serious problems with honesty (they didn't actually read the book) or exhibit for all the world to see that they are unable to grasp a fairly simple thesis: that segregation in our public schools damages children.

Jonathan Kozol has spent the last forty something years observing on a first hand basis the tragedy of how our educational system has failed those who might most benefit from going to clean, well-equipped schools, where every child has a desk, a chair and materials....as well as a decently trained professional educator dedicated to imparting knowledge to them.

It is one thing to blame the poor for their conditions, it is quite another to consign small children to rotten schools on the basis of their luck in not being born into the right race or class. It would seem the only compassion worthy of the conservatives who write reviews for books they can't be bothered to read is feeling sorry for a failed scheme like No Child Left Behind. That, and gratuious attacks on teachers unions. Talk radio propaganda< however, is not a good foundation for book criticism.

Kozol, a man of extraordinary decency and insight into the inequities of our educational system, doesn't base his theories on statistics and thinktank framing. He goes into the schools he writes about, and talks to the kids who are consigned to them, the teachers who have to make do with impossible conditions, and parents fighting for their kids.


Kozol just reports what he sees, and writes movingly and gracefully about those who will pay the price of the criminal neglect our society seems to think is acceptable. The stories he tells are heartbreaking. And that there is no escaping the shame that those attack this book, clearly without reading it, would feel if they weren't so firmly invested in escaping the accountability and responsibility, which the last time I checked were supposed to be Conservative Values.

Jonathan Kozol uses his background in public education and keen wit to deliver another scathing, needed, and largely accurate critique of American public schooling.

In the sequel to his 'Savage Inequalities', he argues that patterns of socioeconomic stratification paired with standardized testing fever are creating and maintaining disparate education systems which are recreating segregated schooling.

Mostly white children in 'nice' suburbs have clean and safe schools with a curriculum that stimulates their interests and creativity. Meanwhile, predominantly black and Hispanic children are consigned to attend run-down inner city schools whose administrators and staff (even the 'good and caring' ones) must spend the scant money they do receive on rote memorization.

Socioeconomic discrepancy will subsequently be used to track those students into an altogether different set of life opportunities.

In addition to economics, Kozol heaps blame at the rise of standardized testing programs. Instituted with the then-idealistic idea they would help schools, teachers, and parents proactively diagnose "learning problems" so all students could then achieve, these programs have instead become a tool in creating and reinforcing the disparities.

Students unable to pass the testing program become branded as 'failure' subsequently limiting their academic and other future options---all on the results of one piece of paper. Examining the current high-stakes test-centric enviroment, it is difficult to believe that this public policy originated as a program intended to help all children.

'Whose children are being helped in America's schools with our current policies?' should be asked

All school districts are vulnerable to 'teaching to the program' but such actions hurt already short-changed inner city students much more than the suburbanite. Because the former school has money to spare outside of the testing programs, compliance with federal and state testing program requirements (no matter how unrealistic the benchmark definitions of student success) is easier to absorb. The same school struggling to keep working toilets is not as fortunate.

Brilliant observations aside, Kozol did not factor in how disability affects education. I had attended a 'rich' school district, but had my own experiences with tracking and unequal resources because I was a special education student who was enrolled in a resource math class. Because I am also aware these experiences are severely amplified in urban school districts and current standardized testing programs attempt to ignore or downplay the need to provide disability accommodations for eligible students, this information should have been included in his study.

A compelling look at the disparity in our educational system. In some parts of this country there is a disparity in annual expenditure per pupil WITHIN THE SAME CITY of $9,000. Nearly every city has an unacceptable disparity. The poor in this nation stay poor because they are denied an equal chance to better themselves - starting at age 5.

The money spent on the bogus No Child Left Behind could and should instead be spent to level the playing field for all students.

Ignoring poverty and blaming the poor is all too popular in America these days, but how can a child escape the cycle of poverty if they don't have the same access to education?

I don't believe that anyone could actually have read this book and still believe that the poor in America are poor because they don't try as hard as the rest of us. The better-off keep these people down by refusing to educate them.

No Child Left Behind is a sham. I know: I work for a software company that makes the tests, scores them, and supports the teachers and administrators who administer these tests. It is simple window dressing by the current administration. I have yet to meet a teacher, administrator or parent who believes NCLB accomplishes a thing for the students. The teachers already KNOW which kids are underperforming. Race and poverty are the biggest predictors of NCLB test scores. Duh! The money being spent to show what is already known could be spent to improve the worst public schools. We waste money measuring students to find out what we already know, instead of spending money to improve their education.

Bottom line, he is right. Shame on us. Not that guilt in and of itself accomplishes anything, but it is important to not just realize how things are, but to realize how unaware we permit ourselves to be on a day-to-day basis. There's little in this book that is shocking on its, but the gravity of situation as it stands is shocking. It is shocking to realize that, not only are we still segregated all these years after 1954's Brown and Board decision, but worse, as Kozol points out, we even fall laughably short of the archaic "separate but equal" standard claimed in the 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson case. We are, for all intents and purposes, separate and unequal. There's plenty of shame to go around, but I like it when Kozol shines the light on our media. We are so poorly served by our media, by our news programs. And that's an important point, because, on an individual basis, we are decent people who do care and we would not accept the current situation if we were really forced to be aware and focused.

The news media these days, the legitimate ones that really pretend to be unbiased, believe in covering both sides of a story by presenting sound bites from people on the two extremes of any issues. There is no in depth analysis or critical thought. On the issue of segregated schools, the news media refers to urban schools as being "diverse." These are schools that are approaching 99% minority students. Kozol points out that "diverse" is now the accepted term for segregated.

I could go off on a tangent about the news media. In fact, I think I will. I still think back to the Republican convention of '04, after Bush gave his speech, and one of the so-called serious, so-called legitimate national network anchors followed the speech by saying, "you can disagree with his politics, but you can't doubt his conviction in his beliefs." Really? That's unbiased analysis? I very much doubt the sincerity of his stated beliefs on the grounds that his actions have very little Christian compassion in them. I know that's off the point, but I see the problems outlined so clearly by Kozol as being part of a much bigger problem, and the whole thing is perpetuated by a culture in which we are pandered to by government and media, and nobody calls on us to look closely at things, to question things. To be critical thinkers. To be self-critical. Actually, this is not off the point at all, because Bush's No Child Left Behind plan is as sleazy and dishonest as anything else from his shameful legacy. A shanda!

As far as whether the segregation is along class or race lines, I don't see the point of arguing one versus the other. It's multifactorial, but it all comes down to who has the power and who doesn't, and the natural tendency of the system to perpetuate itself.

This is an important book. It's human nature to want to look the other way, to not want to grapple with shame. But now you can't. If you're even reading reviews of this book, you should buy it and read it. Read it with an open mind.

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Clearly, the disparities in funding of public education for students in wealth and poor communities are disconcerting. Kozol evidences the conditions under which we educate poor and minority students with vivid and brutal anecdotes. For that reason alone, "Shame of the Nation" is a worthy read. However, I wish he spent more time investigating solutions. He hammers the point that the "white flight" of the middle class to the suburbs has left the poor and disenfranchised in the poor urban districts. He paints a vivid picture of schools that increasingly resemble factory production lines. But now what? He seems to hang his hat on racial integration. He argues that integration will fix all the ills, academic and social. He doesn't spend much time discussing past efforts at integration, such as busing. The trend continues unabated. Each time a new school is opened, the attendance zones become smaller and the homogeneity becomes more intense.Hopefully, writers like Kozol can keep the crisis on the front burner, and over time, we will be able to develop solutions. Somewhere, someone must have had some positive outcomes with low performing schools. I would like to hear more about those efforts.

Jonathan Kozol is very good at exposing the shameful conditions of inner city schools serving an overwhelmingly poor and minority student population. As after I read his earlier book "Savage Inequalities" a number of years ago, I came away shocked at just how bad things still are for so many of this nation's schoolchildren.

Kozol's solution to all the problems facing urban schools is simply to fund them at the same level as the wealthiest suburbs. There is no examination of whether that funding target is appropriate, which is a very important question. Perhaps the ritzy suburbs are spending too much and wasting money on frills such as lavish sports facilities and so on. It's one thing if the residents in that community are willing to pay for those frills but quite another to ask the overburdened taxpayer to provide the same to all schools.

Kozol takes the typical educrat position on all the hot button issues, from vouchers to standardized testing to phonics to gifted & talented programs (all of these are bad in his view) to universal government-run preschool (good in his view). He doesn't provide much in the way of convincing data to support his arguments, which suggests that they are based on ideology rather than sound research.

Jonathan Kozol wrote a compelling and pivotal account of America's forgotten children. Those stuck in under funded, un-safe, and insidiously disadvantaged in equal education compared to children who have personal lap top computers, the best books, and safest learning conditions. This book is a vital call to equalize the educational methods as well as equalizing the distribution of funds to all school age children.
It opens the doors for direly needed changes so that each child receives equal education as an equal American citizen. The accounts in this book will open your heart to call for equalization rather than segregation based on economic conditions for our nation's children. This book can very well be a strong catalyst for revamping educational policies, distribution of funding, and to give each child the chance to attain the highest education possible which will end the cycle of poverty. A gripping account and a 10 Star book for positive changes to take place!
Barbara Rose, author of Stop Being the String Along: A Relationship Guide to being THE ONE and if God Was Like Man
Editor, inspire! magazine

I am a teacher at an inner-city school that struggles with the same issues presented by Kozol. That said, this is the fourth of Kozol's works that I have read, and I came away just as disappointed with "The Shame of the Nation" as I did with the rest of them. I am so incredibly sick of him shouting from the mountaintops that there is a problem with public education. He acts like we don't already know. He acts like there is some unseen solution out there that should be obvious to everybody. Instead of pointing fingers and and complaining about it, why doesn't he use his experience and know-it-all knowledge to offer real, concrete and practical solutions? Kozol is a classic Monday-morning quarterback pointing out the flaws in what everybody else is doing - but he doesn't get his hands dirty anymore. If he is really as educationally omnipresent as he thinks he is, the least he could do is offer some solutions. I've made four mistakes. I will not make a fifth. I have 150 underpriveleged kids to teach, and I can't afford to waste my time on another volume of complaints while he points out the obvious.

Jonathan Kozol's The Shame of the Nation is the most critically engaged, emotionally charged, and socially aware book I have read in quite a while. While much of the academic literature on subjects of oppression and cruelty proceed more like VCR manuals than realistically concerned commentary, Kozol's undertaking into the reinstitution of apartheid schooling rips into the fabric of one's emotional being. Shame of the Nation is a searing exploration into the United States public education system's inequalities and blatant racism as told by the teachers and students that experience this reality every day. Kozol writes with unmatched compassion and a sense of urgency that begs the reader to stop thinking about injustice and to start working to change it.

I have read quite a bit of literature on subjects of oppression, inequality, injustice, and outright fascism in the United States, but nothing has really been able to swirl up such a whirlwind of emotions quite like this book. I think it comes right down to the fact that this is not about economics, politics, or ideologies (which, yes, it clearly is), but more importantly about children. How anyone can read this book with an open mind, and not be completely sick about the society they live in is far beyond my cognitive ability. Kozol engages the reader in the reality of reactionary government policies that seem tailored to producing a completely regressive environment for this nation's minority children. The fact that Kozol does not pull any punches in his writing, and that he goes right after those who are forwarding this agenda of backwards authoritarianism strikes me as one of the more noble things that can be done.

Shame of the Nation does a marvelous job of outlining exactly what the result of neoliberal free market fundamentalist policy agendas produce when social institutions come under their fiendish grips. Across the board high stakes testing under what Kozol refers to as the "No Child Left Untested Act" are completely draconian measures designed not to benefit our nation's poorest children, but to punish them for something they never had control over to begin with. Stories of children weeping and some wetting themselves as they are forced to take tests as early as kindergarten and first grade abound throughout the book. If that alone is not enough to get someone white knuckled, then we have completely lost our social conscious as a society.

The brave underpaid and overworked teaching staff at many of these inner-city learning prisons are turned into fascistic automatons that become pawns of the system of stale test-based curricula, and even those few outstanding teachers that challenge the system are forced to comply or be removed from their "teacher-proof" positions. Students are lead around dingy, sometimes even condemned, buildings in fashions more similar to military marching than those of playful schoolchildren. The classroom has been completely removed of any sense of compassion, fun, and monkey business that are typical of young children, and instead has been replaced with totalitarian salute systems, reminiscent of Nazi party gatherings, and stringent lesson plan instruction.

Kozol does not offer much, explicitly, in the way of how to change the system other than good old fashioned activism, but the changes that need to be made are implicit throughout the text. These schools need much more funding and its not just education that needs a fundamental transformation, but the whole society. The energy and rage of the civil rights era needs to be instilled in people, and the country has to come together to fight for its children. Because without our children, what will we have when our future comes and our society looks to the next generation?

What could be a more important topic at this juncture in American history than the education of our children. It's not an overstatement to say that this is a very alarming book. Jonathan Kozol is a very talented writer, but beyond that he's a very passionate and committed individual. He shares his experiences and insightful observations with great clarity and compassion. His voice is never shrill, his comments never exaggerated. He comes across as a thorough researcher and keen visionary and I admit I share his point of view. Of course there will be those who attempt to discourage any discourse on the subject he writes so eloquently about. You will hear the hysterical screams of LIBERAL, SOCIALIST, and the like coming from familiar quarters, but the questions posed in this book rise far above all the rhetorical nonsense.
No one can deny that the economic divide in this country is growing wider, or that poverty is a present or looming reality for more and more people. Government spending on programs to help the poor out of poverty are rapidly disappearing. Some look at past failures and conclude that government poverty programs are a waste of money. In order to come to that conclusion though one cannot look to carefully, one must rely on sound bites from ideologues. A careful examination of government poverty programs will reveal successes as well as failures, which, in a compassionate and caring environment, would not mean giving in to irrational feelings of hopelessness. In a compassionate and caring environment the successes would be built upon and used instructively to help correct mistakes and move forward, rather than retreating to old ignorant and prejudice notions of the poor being beyond help or undeserving of it. It is these very notions I feel strongly are the reasons behind the attacks on public education. Behind all the smoke screens that hid for so many years the slow deterioration of the system until it had finally reached a low point where it could be assessed a complete and utter failure in need of dismantling and rebuilding in an Orwellian style. A style that harkens back to a century ago when working class people had few rights. This is all to apparent throughout the book and the connections between the business establishment and this new form of education are frightening to say the least.
Public education is perhaps the most important anti poverty program this nation has ever had. Even more importantly though education is the protector of democracy. Soldiers and weapons can only protect our freedoms from attacks beyond our boarders, what protects our freedoms from within is an educated, free thinking populace. If we turn education for those at the lower end of our social and economic system into nothing more than training for menial labor than I ask, what is to become of our democracy? Will it slowly fade until finally, without much notice, one day the great experiment has become unrecognizable. It doesn't take much in the way of forethought or imagination to understand that a democracy can not exist where there is no room for it to grow. And it has always grown, like so many other living things, from the bottom upwards. So we can blame the immigrants who don't speak english, or the black folks in the ghettos, or poor rural whites in trailer parks. We can say using tax dollars to create opportunities through proper education instead of the systematic destruction of the creative spirit and intelligence that Mr. Kozol writes of, we can say it's all liberal nonsense. Or we can at last remove our heads from the sand and open up a dialogue in the hopes that we can make informed decisions and come up with creative solutions to build a viable public school system. Without which the future of this democracy looks very bleak indeed.