An indictment of American public school education
and federal initiatives
By Greg Petty
December 2005
The Shame of the Nation
The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America
By Jonathan Kozol
338 pp.
Crown Publishers, New York
President Bush recently received a startling
message while attending the Summit of the America’s.
The U.S attempted to insert language in an official communiqué
that stated the Caribbean and Latin America had many economic
challenges to meet and still had over 98 million people
living in poverty. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and other leaders,
insisted that if that language held then the United States
had to insert a statement that it had 37 million living
in poverty. Hurricane Katrina laid bare for all Americans
the extent of our poverty and those who are left behind
in our society.
According to the information provided by the
Children’s Defense Fund in the September 19, 2005
issue of Newsweek (please read the whole article) 18% of
those in poverty are under 18 years of age. 1 in 5 is born
poor, 1 in 7 children will never graduate from high school.
We are throwing away millions of young minds!!! What was
the message of the television ad, “A mind is a terrible
thing to waste.” The “bootstrap”
that has allowed many to raise themselves up and better
their position in life has been our public education system.
It may have been in the past, and does exist in some systems
now, but the overall picture of America’s public education
does not inspire hope. We are not even providing adequate
education for millions of students much less engaged in
how to finance and promote “world-class” education
which will propel us into the future. Public systems cannot
succeed with the advantaged and the funding that goes with
them attending separate schools. All of America’s
children comprise our future.
Mr.
Kozol has been directly involved in public education as
a teacher, educator and writer for over 4 decades. He shares
his broad experience to enlighten us as to the past efforts,
trends and fads that failed as well as the current experiments.
His sense of all this is that we are tinkering on the edges
(and have done so for a long time) and totally failed to
tackle the hard issues and truly support good public education
for all American children.
After shocking you with the “industrialization/commoditization”
of young minds unfortunate enough to attend school systems
who adopted programs such as “Success for All”
he proceeds to lay bare the facts of our apartheid public
schools. Make no mistake, education for Black and Hispanic
students in many systems in America is not equal to that
received by White students whether the system is an urban,
suburban or rural system.
Children from America’s lower economic
stratas start out with disadvantages. Many, in spite of
Head Start (Excluded students have increased
by 10% since Bush took office in direct
contradiction of his words) begin first grade with little
or no preschool. They are already behind those who had the
training and attention paid to them in these crucial years.
By the 3rd grade they are subjected to their first “high
stakes” test as to who can or cannot be promoted.
“Which of these children will receive the highest
scores – those who spent the years from two to four
in lovely little Montessori schools and other pastel-painted
settings in which tender and attentive grown-ups read to
them from storybooks and introduced them to the world of
numbers, and the shapes of letters, and the sizes and varieties
of solid objects…or to do those many other interesting
things in early-childhood specialists refer to as prenumeracy
skills, or the ones who spent their years at home in front
of a TV or sitting by the window of a slum apartment
gazing down into the street?” (Mom is working two
jobs to survive)
Shame of the Nation leaves little doubt that
America has systematically failed to address inequitable
funding and true support for public education. We have regressed
back into “separate but not equal education”
in many areas of America. The hard steps to fully implement
the conclusions Brown –vs- Board of Education demanded
have not taken place.
Jonathan Kozol lays bare for us the following
failures in our system:
- The emphasis on testing has become the all consuming
effort instead of an instrument of measurement. Fostering
curiosity and love of learning in every child has been
extinguished by spending every spare moment preparing
for the next test. Recess, arts and music have been
cancelled.
- The “Taylorization” of school systems
instructional methods. Students become units of production
and every aspect of their daily life in the school is
prescribed by Skinnerian rewards and sanctions. This
is not true learning but only exactly as much
learning as is necessary to score adequately on the
next test. This is the production of “widgets”
that can snap into our industrialized commercial production
system. A brilliant student will emerge from this system
in spite of it not because of it.
- The failure of public school funding schemes. Spending
per pupil is not equal in urban versus suburban school
systems. In spite of being declared unconstitutional
in many states it persists to this day. Schools for
“poor” students are literally falling apart
and must be rebuilt. How many suburban schools have
you seen with missing windows and crumbling bricks?
Not to mention possessing current text books?
- The failure of Brown vs Board of Education is because
our legal system has, since that decision, failed to
define fair and equal public education financing as
a constitutional right. In 1973 the Supreme Court overruled
a Texas class action suit declaring inequitable education
finance unconstitutional. Funding is the critical component
needed to ensure a firm foundation for public educaton
and to address disparities. This decision of our highest
court was an arrow through the heart. Since that time
most legal efforts have been forced to remain limited
to state courts. Congressional efforts to introduce
legislation defining the right to equitable funding
in law have not yet been successful. With
your support we can change this unfortunate fact.
I am hoping that reading Jonathan’s
book will do to you what it did to me. It made me angry,
incredulous, depressed and at the same time, energized to
try to be part of a “revolution” we all need
to initiate and participate in. Nothing less than the future
of our society is at stake. Remember the energy and the
effort put into the Civil Rights movement in the 60’s?
We need to mobilize again in the same fashion in support
of public education and effective solutions
that truly educate our children.
Mr. Kozol reminded me that I am guilty. I
am guilty of knowing there are problems with our public
education policies, outmoded sources of funding and recent
federal initiatives intended to hold those accountable for
“failing” schools. We are penalizing the wrong
people, it’s not the teachers or the administrators,
it’s the entire system. Guilty because I am not yet
involved in any one of the solutions. I plan to change that
as soon as I figure out where my efforts can be the most
beneficial.
