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.
Interpretation
Kozol critiques the educational system, highlighting inequalities that perpetuate privilege and detachment from societal issues.
In this quote, Jonathan Kozol sheds light on the systemic issues in education, suggesting that schools efficiently serve the status quo rather than address deeper societal inequalities. He points out that affluent children receive a quality education that reinforces their privilege, while those from marginalized backgrounds attend underfunded schools that prepare them primarily for servitude. This stark contrast promotes a cycle of privilege and ignorance among the privileged, thereby detaching them from the struggles faced by the less fortunate.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about education reform at a community event.
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.'
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.
Here's the thing: If you don't want your kids to read a book, fine. You can tell them not to read a book, and maybe they will and maybe they won't. But you can't say what other kids can read.
So, this is my government's agenda: educate your daughter and save your daughter.
I am naive enough to read incessantly because I cannot, on my own, get to know enough people profoundly enough.
I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the world, considering us as a civilized and a Christian country, that we deny the advantages of learning to women.
If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn't expecting it.
When I was 17, I worked in a mentoring program in Harlem designed to improve the community. That's when I first gained an appreciation of the Harlem Renaissance, a time when African-Americans rose to prominence in American culture. For the first time, they were taken seriously as artists, musicians, writers, athletes, and as political thinkers.
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