The Shame of the Nation

1. The Shame of the Nation Jonathon Kozol

2. Kozolbelieves that schools are segregated, do you think that it’s true?

3. racial segregation; specifically: a former policy of segregation and political and economic discrimination against non-European groups in the Republic of South Africa

4. If schools really are segregated like kozolsays, what do you think would be the reason why people do it? • Growing up did you ever notice or experience kids at school that would segregate?

5. “Almost three fourths of black and Latino students attend schools that are predominantly minority” “We cannot be satisfied as long as Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one” Dr. King. Speaking of the movement of black people from small towns to urban areas.

6. Do you believe that schools are programming students to just work? How do you feel about this?

7. “embracing pedagogy of direct command and absolute control” • “Even if you have a felony arrest, we want you to understand that you can be a manager someday” -Told by the principal of New York school.

8. “If you talk with them of college options at this point, and if they trust you they will say, nobody ever told me I could do it” • “we may be trapping these young ones in low-paying jobs”

9. Who do you think is responsible to guarantee the education of our students/children?

10. “If we who are working in these schools don’t advocate for children, then who will?” –Dr. Pritchett. Superintendent of Indianapolis public. • “Where, within the limits of the possible, should we direct whatever time and energy we have?”

11. All children can learn • “If the officials who repeat this incantation honestly believe all kids learn, why aren't they fighting to make sure these kids can learn in the same good schools their own children attend? To isolate the victim, and shortchange the victim, and then tell him he can “learn to his potential” if he and his teachers just try hard enough”

12. “Education involves the heart as well as the mind….Learning entails play and risk-taking as well as ordered study.” • Instead students cram and teacher strip down curriculum all in preparation for exams. • Instruction becomes devoid of passion and of meaning for both.

13. Jonathan Kozol: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urBIZUrDmFo

14. “There’s no time for children to ask questions” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPDLiB3J2Wc

15. Have we gone too far. • “The banishment of recess from the normal school day is perhaps the ultimate penurious denial.” • Where do children play when they have no yard, no safe playground and live in small apartment?

16. Biography • A defining moment in Kozol's life occurred in 1964 when, shortly after returning to Boston to pursue an academic career, he heard about three young civil-rights workers who had been murdered by the Ku Klux Klan. He had never been political or had any involvement in race issues, but he was greatly affected by the news. Soon after hearing of this event he began working as a teacher in a freedom school that had been set up in a black church in a low-income, predominantly black area in Roxbury, just south of Boston. • Kozol has made a practice of leaving comfortable surroundings for more challenging, impoverished areas. He enjoyed teaching young children, and eventually got a job in the public school system in Roxbury teaching fourth grade. The segregated public school in Roxbury was very different from the school Kozol had attended as a child growing up in the wealthy Boston suburb of Newton. Shortly after he began teaching in the public school system, Kozol was fired for reading from a book of poetry by Langston Hughes that was not on the approved curriculum list. Soon after, he wrote his first work of nonfiction, Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools, based on his teaching experiences in Roxbury. The book won the National Book Award in 1968. http://myhero.com/go/hero.asp?hero=jkozol