More money is put into prisons than into schools. That, in itself, is the description of a nation bent on suicide. I mean, what is more precious to us than our own children? We are going to build a lot more prisons if we do not deal with the schools and their inequalities.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the troubling prioritization of funding for prisons over education, stressing the importance of addressing educational inequalities.
Jonathan Kozol's quote points out the alarming reality that a nation invests more in its prison system than in its schools, revealing a deep societal flaw. By suggesting that this is a form of self-destruction, he emphasizes the vital need to prioritize education, particularly for children, as they represent the future of society. If inequalities in education are not addressed, the cycle of incarceration and societal failure will only continue to escalate, leading to more prisons being built instead of schools.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about educational reform at a school board meeting.
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.
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.
Governments want efficient technicians, not human beings, because human beings become dangerous to governments – and to organized religions as well. That is why governments and religious organizations seek to control education.
If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.
A book is a loaded gun in the house next door...Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?
It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.
Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in.
All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.
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