Jonathan Kozol has a new book coming out this week, and will be speaking twice in DC to promote it: Politics and Prose on Friday and Blair HS in Silver Spring on Saturday morning.
It's called The Shame of the Nation: Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. I haven't seen a copy yet, but the press release for the Silver Spring event that I saw contained some excerpts, including the following:
Kozol railed for 2 hours about how tests are bad, standards are bad, accountability is bad, education researchers in *shudder* "Washington think tanks" are turning elementary school into a factory system, and the world of education is a dispirited, broken place because of efforts to analyze policy decisions and find efficient solutions. I was sorely disappointed, and came out asking "What would you rather we do, barring immediate reversal of America's poverty issues?" I honestly want to know: acknowledging the fact that it's nearly politically impossible to pump more money into education without some proof that it's working, what would you suggest we do instead?
Savage Inequality is still a mesmerizing, heart breaking book. Kozol is at his best when he's revealing the great injustice of economic conditions in our country, especially because his audiences are largely in communities of privilege that are isolated from the harsh reality of urban poverty. But testing didn't cause these conditions, and testing isn't aggravating them either. Once he leaves the realm of anti-poverty cheerleader and stumbles into policy analysis, Kozol's soaring rhetoric falls dramatically short.
I agree with Kozol--our ultimate goal should be that every child loves to learn. But, given all the ground we have to make up by the time they even enter kindergarten (which he so eloquently reveals himself), disadvantaged children have got a lot of hard work ahead of them if that's ever going to happen. It's unfair, I agree. But blame the inequality, not the tests that measure it.
It's called The Shame of the Nation: Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. I haven't seen a copy yet, but the press release for the Silver Spring event that I saw contained some excerpts, including the following:
and'I went to Washington to challenge the soft bigotry of low expectations,' said President Bush in his campaign for reelection in September 2004. 'It's working. It's making a difference.' Here we have one of those deadly lies that by sheer repetition is at length accepted by surprisingly large numbers of Americans. But it is not the truth; and it is not an innocent misstatement of the facts. It is a devious appeasement of the heartache of the parents of the black and brown and poor, and if it is not forcefully resisted it will lead us further in a
very dangerous direction.
'There is no misery index for the children of apartheid education. There ought to be; we measure almost everything else that happens to them in their schools. Do kids who go to schools like these enjoy the days they spend in them? Is school, for most of them, a happy place to be? You do not find the answers to these questions in reports about achievement levels, scientific methods of accountability, or structural revisions in the modes of governance.I saw Kozol speak while I was an undergraduate, and I have to say, I remember his speech bringing me to tears. I was invigorated by what he had to say, ready to be a crusader for social justice. Last year, he was giving an address at Georgetown, and I went to see him again. I was ready to be reminded what it is that I work for.
Kozol railed for 2 hours about how tests are bad, standards are bad, accountability is bad, education researchers in *shudder* "Washington think tanks" are turning elementary school into a factory system, and the world of education is a dispirited, broken place because of efforts to analyze policy decisions and find efficient solutions. I was sorely disappointed, and came out asking "What would you rather we do, barring immediate reversal of America's poverty issues?" I honestly want to know: acknowledging the fact that it's nearly politically impossible to pump more money into education without some proof that it's working, what would you suggest we do instead?
Savage Inequality is still a mesmerizing, heart breaking book. Kozol is at his best when he's revealing the great injustice of economic conditions in our country, especially because his audiences are largely in communities of privilege that are isolated from the harsh reality of urban poverty. But testing didn't cause these conditions, and testing isn't aggravating them either. Once he leaves the realm of anti-poverty cheerleader and stumbles into policy analysis, Kozol's soaring rhetoric falls dramatically short.
I agree with Kozol--our ultimate goal should be that every child loves to learn. But, given all the ground we have to make up by the time they even enter kindergarten (which he so eloquently reveals himself), disadvantaged children have got a lot of hard work ahead of them if that's ever going to happen. It's unfair, I agree. But blame the inequality, not the tests that measure it.
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