Kozol: Still Separate, Still Unequal: America's Education Apartheid

 "It really does come down to that-if the rich continue to hoard wealth and abuse the other 95% of society then they continually make themselves superfluous. By doing so, they recieve the same treatment that they dole out to the less unfortunate. This effect is clearly seen throughout the US presently as life as we know it is disintegrating before our eyes and chaos increasingly rules." pg1

"All people are due equal education and everything else that goes along with maintaining a healthy society. "pg 2 

"In Chicago, by the academic year 2002-2003, 87 percent of public school enrollment was black or Hispanic; less than 10 percent of children in the schools were white. In Washington D.C., 94 percent of children were black or Hispanic, less than 5 percent were white. In St. Louis, 82 percent of the student population were black or Hispanic; In Philadelphia and Cleveland, 79 percent; in Los Angeles, 84 percent, in Detroit, 96 percent; in Baltimore, 89 percdent. In New York City, nearly three quarters of the students were black or Hispanic."

"Its more like being hidden,''said a fifiteen year old girl named Isabel I met some years ago in Harlem, in attempting to explain to me the ways in which she and her classmates understood the racial segregation of their neighborhoods and schools. "It's as if you have been put in a garage where, if they don't have room for something but arent sure if they should throw it out, they put it there where they don't need to think of it again."

"I wish that this school was the most beautiful school in the whole why world."

"If you close your eyes to the changing racial composition of the schools and look only at budget actions and political events, says Noreen Connell, the director of the nonprofit Educational Priorities Panel in New York, "you're missing the assumptions that are underlying these decisions." When minority parents ask for something better for their kids, she says, "the assumption is that these are parents who can be discounted. These are kids who just don't count-children we dont' value."

"This then is the accusation that Alliyah and her classmates send our way:"You have. . . .We do not have." Are they right or are they wrong? Is this a case of naive and simplistic juvenile exaggeration? What does a third grader know about these bigtime questions of fairness and justice? Physical appeareances apart, how in any case do you begin to measure something so diffuse and vast and seemingly abstract as having more, or having less, or not having at all?"


COMMENTS

We have made such a huge issue over the desegregation of our schools in the past but yet to return to a period in time where we are almost completely 360 in the Brown vs. Board of Ed. decision.I believe the statistics to be louder than anything, the numbers just go on and on and continue to astonish me. In terms of the last 2 quotes I chose, I believe that a lot of the children don't recognize of having more or having less or nothing at all.
We need to honestly give the children of our future equal opportunities for education. How can we send children to these prestigious schools and then sit back and ignore the fact that other children are at an extreme disadvantage. Standardized testing is a huge problem. These teachers and school districts are "doing" what they have to in regards to their occupation.
To stand out and go beyond the educational necessities of these children would be an outlaw. I think we need to reconsider what is in the childrens best interest; and by making them take these monotonous stardized tests repeatively just so we can see the "progression" or is it "retrogression" of these kids. Stop wasteing time and money on something that isn't for the benefit of these kids, because its clearly not working and not only is it making it harder on the teachers and parents but most importantly the students.