A great deal has been written in recent years about the purported lack of motivation in the children of the Negro ghettos. Little in my experience supports this, yet the phrase has been repeated endlessly, and the blame in almost all cases is placed somewhere outside the classroom.
Interpretation
The quote challenges the notion that children from disadvantaged backgrounds lack motivation, suggesting that external factors, rather than the children themselves, are often blamed.
Jonathan Kozol's quote reflects on the common narrative surrounding children from impoverished neighborhoods, specifically those within Negro ghettos, which posits that they lack motivation. Kozol argues that this narrative is misleading and that it is often used to deflect responsibility away from the educational system and societal structures that contribute to these children's circumstances. By suggesting that the blame is misplaced, he calls for a deeper examination of the systemic issues at play rather than accepting superficial explanations.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about educational reform and the challenges faced by students from underprivileged backgrounds.
Schooling should not be left to the whim or wealth of village elders. I believe that we should fund all schools in the U.S. with our national resources. All these kids are being educated to be Americans, not citizens of Minneapolis or San Francisco.
An awful lot of people come to college with this strange idea that there's no longer segregation in America's schools, that our schools are basically equal; neither of these things is true.
Hypersegregated inner-city schools - in which one finds no more than five or ten white children, at the very most, within a student population of as many as 3,000 - are the norm, not the exception, in most northern urban areas today.
I wrote the first book, and I thought people would say: 'Separate and unequal schools in the City of Boston? I didn't know that. Let's go out and fix it.'
The trouble is not that schools don't work; they do. They're excellent machines for achieving historically accepted purposes. In suburban schools are children of the rich, who grow up to privilege and anesthetic oblivion to pain - and who then use the servants produced by ghetto schools.
Children are not simply commodities to be herded into line and trained for the jobs that white people who live in segregated neighborhoods have available.
Universities should be safe havens where ruthless examination of realities will not be distorted by the aim to please or inhibited by the risk of displeasure.
When I was growing up, I knew I wanted to be a mathematician, but I had no idea what that entailed.
We talk of globalization, and how much money is needed for the education of children in the world, their liberation and rehabilitation just $9 billion which is four days of military expense. Just four days. Nine billion dollars is nothing. But what Americans spent on ice cream just 20 percent of this. One fifth of what you spend on ice creams could bring the children out of the clutches of their masters and put them to school.
Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own - but that we could never have described on our own.
Our children are the living messages we send to a future we will ever see... Will we rob them of their destiny? Will we rob them of their dreams? No - we will not do that.
I see it as my job to try to make history to be a popular thing. The longer I keep going the less weird it will be to be a female historian.
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