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

This is a Scary Book | The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America | Jonathan Kozol

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	• The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America Jonathan Kozol Three Rivers Press, 2006 - 432 pages average customer review:based on 57 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Very Informative

Jonathan Kozol's book "Shame of the Nation" is a great book to learn about the apartheid that is happening in our school systems and to learn about the separation of funding for our schools. He feels that the school system in the United States needs to become more integrated because integration would give the students an equal opportunity in the world. Predominately "white" schools get more school funding, more often from private sources, thus creating segregation in our schools. He notes the irony of the schools that are named after great leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther Kind Jr. and Rosa Parks and he reveals that such schools are in the worst condition. Jonathan Kozol's solution to this problem is to give more funding to schools that need the funds, he wants the money to go to the students that need it.
I agree with Jonathan Kozol, in the sense that the schools need more funding. Through personal experiences and with my own investigations, I've found that segregation is a common factor in society as a whole. I think that our schools need to have higher paid teachers, and teachers who are vastly more qualified than the teachers of today. The qualifications for becoming a teacher need to be more tough because these are the people who are teaching our youth, our future, and it's important that they receive the education that is necessary to have a promising future.

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The Shame of the Nation

If you are a teacher who is interested in how urban schools are being managed, you will definitely like this book. Kozol has done many observations in different school, he shares his thoughts and experiences with the reader.

This is a Scary Book

Mr. Kozol, himself a white New York City liberal, to his credit has carefully described a widespread problem of the restoration of racism, Northern style. To his own shame however, he has not affixed the blame for this restoration. He has just carefully described a rampant problem in always handwringing terms. Throughout these 337 pages, the word "racism" is not used even once - not to mention the phrase "white racism." And the single quote defending the "rollback" of the 1954 Supreme Court Decision is of course attributed to America's favorite "Uncle," Clarence Thomas himself, as if he alone was the cause of the rollback.

I describe this book as scary, not just because of the sordid and embarrassing exposition of the plight of our inner city schools, which by any description is a true alternative scary poor black reality in the midst of "white liberal affluence," but because of how carefully "liberals" like Mr. Kozol can mask the real cause of the problem: the larger and deeper issue of inner city white liberal racism and hypocrisy.

Giving the book the subtitle of "The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America," was indeed a clever trick because it would lead the reader to think that the author would eventually affix the blame for such restoration. However, he hides and masks the blame behind the same wall of neat legalities, obfuscations and sleights of mind as did "Uncle" Clarence himself -- and with the same consummate skill. He dissembles all the way down to the bottom of the barrel.

(Shame on you, Mr. Kozol!)

The author describes the bifurcated racist process in excruciating details: that is, the "tricks" used by the inner city liberals and the rich of New York to finesse the issue of race and get back their old familiar segregated schools and neighborhoods, and then he describes the miseries suffered by those Blacks and Hispanics who are injured by these shameful tactics. This is an alternative language to go along with the alternative universe he is describing, I suppose?

But he does not get anywhere near the most obvious of the conclusions: that the largely, liberal white people in America's largest inner cities, are just as racist in the year 2009, (and with a Black President no less), as the backwoods "rednecks" of Mississippi were in 1954 when the Supreme Court Decision to integrate the schools was handed down.

That is what is scary about this book. At least the Mississippi "good ol' boys" had the courage to stare you in the face and call you the "N-word." However, these New York and Chicago, LA, Philadelphia, and Detroit liberals like Mr. Kozol, prefer to "treat you like an "N-Word," wring their hands a few times, move to the suburbs if they can, and while "camping out" there, then call you by a more respectful name.

Kozol knows as well as I do that the consequences on the lives of black people are exactly the same. However, I agree with him on one thing: Because of this utter shame, "The Fire Next time" is sure to come again.

Three stars.

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Move to Pennsylvania, then.

[...] indicates that for 2006, the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia School Districts spent [...] per student. This is vs. an average expenditure of [...] per student for the state as a whole.

In case anyone hasn't figured it out, the title is sarcastic - anyone that moves to PA for the quality of the education in the big cities will be sorely disappointed, despite the higher expenditures per student. Throwing more money at the problem does exactly nothing............actually, the argument can be made that it makes things worse.

The author should think about including this data in the next edition.

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Interesting read!

I was required to read this book for a graduate class and was actually pleasantly surprised. I'm a teacher and there's a lot of things in this book I never thought about! Great read!

Over the last 15 years, the state of inner-city public schools has been in a steep and continuing decline. Since the federal courts began dismantling the landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, segregation of black children has reverted to its highest level since 1968. In many inner-city schools, a stick-and-carrot method of behavioral control traditionally used in prisons is now used with students. Meanwhile, as high-stakes testing takes on pathological and punitive dimensions, liberal education has been increasingly replaced by culturally barren and robotic methods of instruction that would be rejected out of hand by schools that serve the mainstream of society.

Filled with the passionate voices of children, principals, and teachers, and some of the most revered leaders in the black community, The Shame of the Nation pays tribute to those undefeated educators who persist against the odds, but directly challenges the chilling practices now being forced upon our urban systems by the Bush administration. In their place, Kozol offers a humane, dramatic challenge to our nation to fulfill at last the promise made some 50 years ago to all our youngest citizens.

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