Racial segregation has come back to public education with a vengeance.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the resurgence of racial segregation in schools, emphasizing a troubling trend in public education.
Jonathan Kozol's statement points to the alarming return of racial segregation within the public education system, suggesting that issues of inequality and discrimination are re-emerging, often undermining the progress made in previous decades toward desegregation and equal opportunity for all students. The quote challenges us to confront these realities and work towards a truly inclusive educational environment.
In practice
During a speech on education reform, one might reference this quote to emphasize the need for addressing inequality in schools.
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.
The arts, sciences, humanities, physical education, languages and maths all have equal and central contributions to make to a student's education.
To confer the gift of drawing, we must create an eye that sees, a hand that obeys, a soul that feels; and in this task, the whole life must cooperate. In this sense, life itself is the only preparation for drawing. Once we have lived, the inner spark of vision does the rest.
Girls are going to school again in Swat Valley. And that is great.
I read a lot, I write a lot, and I have conversations with people I think are intelligent and wise.
Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly.
Many people want to send their children to faith schools because they get good exam results, but they're not foolish enough to believe that it's because of faith that they get good exam results.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.