Countdown: Shame of the Nation: Chapters 1-6

5. Sentences on the big picture

            In The Shame of the Nation, Jonathan Kozol takes the reader on his journey through our troubled society where segregation is still a significant problem in education. Kozol shares his encounters with inner-city students who are personally dealing with and feeling the costs of not having or being given the opportunity to an equal education. Kozol brings up various issues such as inadequate resources, standardized test preparations, and scary statistics in inner-city schools. It is clear that there is a major problem that some of the world is sheltered from. Kozol expresses this need and the urgency to realize these issues and to do the best to make a change.

4. Key Passages

·      “Racial isolation and the concentrated poverty of children in a public school go hand in hand..” (20).

·      “Learning itself- the learning of a skill, or the enjoying of a book, and even having an idea- is now defined increasingly not as a process or preoccupation that holds satisfaction of its own but in proprietary terms, as if it were of a piece of land” (96).

·      “There is a new emboldenment among the relatively privileged to isolate their children as completely as they can from more than token numbers of the children of minorities” (135).

·      “If the road does not lead to Rome,” said a woman who was called the “manager” of language arts for the Chicago public schools, “we don’t want it followed.” “Rome”, she said, was the “examination children would be given at the end of a specific sequence of instruction” (110-111).

3. Key terms

·      Apartheid – Kozol brings this term up numerous times in the book to describe the segregation in schools based on race and poverty.

·      “taking ownership” –This is often the mindset in many market-driven classrooms in inner-city schools.  “Children are encouraged to believe they ‘own’ the book, the concept the idea. They don’t engage with knowledge; they possess it” (96).

·      “reconstitution”  - This is the term referring to when a badly failing school is redesigned. Often these schools that undergo this “reconstitution” are directed toward a work-related goal. (98)

 

2. Connections

·      After reading chapter six, I connected and agreed with Kozol’s view of standardized testing. He shows us that many teaching materials used in these inner-city schools are “manuals” that only prepare students to take these specific tests. He feels as though that is the only focus that the school has. Ever since I can remember, standardized tests have always been a huge emphasis in schools. I often recall being so focused on the TAKS test that we would forget how fun learning could be and became stressed about passing. Even though I wasn’t enrolled in an inner-city school, segregation did take place. Many students would be isolated from the rest of class to get extra help. They might stay after school or even skip recess to get tutoring. I am waiting for the day to see changes made in the way we view standardized testing.

·      In The Shame of the Nation, Kozol expresses how middle-class parents aim to keep their children isolated from poor or minority students. I remember a friend of mine that lived in the school district that would lead her to go to an inner-city school. Her parents said, “well, we will do anything to keep her away from those kids”. This saddened me because I actually knew a lot of kids who went to that high school. Although this school may not have had the best reputation or test scores, their statement made me realize that segregation was still an issue.

1. Question

In what ways do you think we could improve the resources available to inner-city schools?