Quotes from "The Shame of the Nation" by Jonathon Kozol Chapter 8

Page 189

“”What a cheap investment,” he observed, “to take a boy and give him some stars in his eyes.””

A compassionate teacher with a great education and a few extra bucks goes a long way for a classroom of students.  A classroom doesn’t need a bunch of nice things to give students a great education.  Yes, these nice things can help enhance the learning experience and make things a bit more fun, but with less substance comes more creativity.  A teacher wants their students to be creativity so a teacher should learn to be creativity themselves as well when it comes to making lessons for a student.  A teacher doesn’t need to have the latest in technology, he/she just needs to care and be able to teach his/her students in such a way that they will be excited to learn.  Would you rather be in a fancy classroom with a teacher lecturing on or in a classroom with not-so-much, yet your teacher makes learning fun?  I feel as though people tend to think they need a lot of fancy, high-tech, fun things to learn.

Page 195

“An entirely different kind of promise, one that seems much easier to understand in human terms, is the high set of expectations that attach themselves to changes in the topmost personnel—superintendent, CEO, or chancellor, as they are variously known—who come and go so frequently in many of our urban systems, although personnel and program oftentimes are intertwined.”

These people are just popping in and out of the system with big ideas, yet two years later, they’re gone!  It doesn’t seem fair to the urban schools because it leaves for an unstable system.  With every new hire, there’s more learning and planning that needs to be taken place.  Why can’t they just hire someone that they know or believe will really do a good job, not just someone with good ideas?  Is it the hiring process for these individuals that is skewed?  According to the quote, it seems that mostly in urban areas this is happening.  Maybe this is because urban schools are less than suburban schools, these people have more work that needs to get done.  These individuals are introduced with such high expectations and they are expected to live up to them and that must be where the pressure sets in.

Page 199

“Education Secretary Bennett called his school “a mecca of education” after Clark threw out 300 students who were often late for class or had high absence rates, whom he described as “parasites” and “leeches.”  Two thirds of the students he threw out ended up in the Passaic County Jail, according to a teacher at the school, but average test scores briefly rose a bit because the kids who scored the lowest now were gone.”

This is basically telling students “if you don’t want to learn on time, then we don’t want to teach you.”  The 300 students that were kicked out of the schools are the students that need education the most!  This is why they’re in jail now and not at some other type of school.  Where are these students supposed to go if they don’t have much money to go to a private school?  It’s so sad that these students were just simply kicked out of school; who knows for sure why these students are coming late to school or class.  Maybe students are coming late to class late because they’re class is so boring and they don’t learn anyways.  Maybe students are coming late to school because there is family stuff going on at home that they need to tend to.  Also, to call these students “parasites” and/or “leeches” is ridiculous and no one should speak to or about students like this.  Would you want someone like this person in charge of your schools?

Page 201

“On a significantly more far-reaching scale, there are the promises made by our nation’s presidents, which in notable cases in the past (that of Lyndon Johnson, for example) have delivered very important benefits to children of low income but which, in other and more recent instances, have either been broken very quickly or else been acted upon with a degree of bullish certitude that leaves no room for sensible correction when the consequences turn out to be damaging.”

There are always “educational reforms” and promises for a better future for our students and America.  Where is it?  Yes, changing education for the better is of course something that’s going to take time and isn’t easy.  There will never be 100% of people all for a certain reform either.  But, why all of these promises and people still believing in them year after year?  It doesn’t seem fair to the students, teacher, or the schools.  Especially with what’s going on now with NCLB and Race to the Top; these don’t/are not working so why keep pushing them?  They sounds fantastic to some at first, but is there any research proving this will work or will they just push it on the schools and watch them fall?  I feel like maybe too big of steps need to be taken and they need to start small and work their way up.  Maybe even by fixing the schools first, that in itself can go a long way.

Page 213

“Experts in desegregation sometimes note that social policy in the United States, to the degree that it concerns the education of black and Hispanic children, has been turned back more than 50 years to where the nation stood in 1954.”

It’s such a scary way of looking at things, but true.  The schools nowadays are very segregated and what schools are doing poorly?  The urban schools.  Something needs to be done about this, but what?  This is what the administrations need to be talking about, not ways to “fix” our schools that are just making them worse.  Why not physically fix up the schools that are physically falling down in the urban areas and talk about the inequality and talk about the segregation and see where that brings us.  It’s silly to keep is all quiet when everyone knows it’s there.  By keeping it quiet, it’s not helping any, if anything, it’s making it worse.

Page 213

“The efficiency agenda and the notion that our public schools exist primarily to give the business sector what it asks for, or believes it needs, are anything but new; and the racially embarrassing beliefs by which these notions were accompanied a century ago, although widely disavowed today, are with us still.”

The businesses are slowly taking over our schools, a majority of our urban schools.  Why are the aims targeted on the urban schools?  Are they just simply saying these schools are failing anyways so they might as well throw them in a corporation as soon as possible?  What kind of “fix” is that for education in our schools?  Also, if there have been people that have disagreed with this, then why is it still happening?  It’s not fair to these schools, these businesses aren’t even helping them, just making things worse for the struggling teachers and students.