Children are not simply commodities to be herded into line and trained for the jobs that white people who live in segregated neighborhoods have available.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that children should not be viewed as mere resources for labor, especially in racially segregated societies.
Jonathan Kozol's quote critiques the reduction of children to mere commodities, suggesting that their potential and individuality should not be overlooked. It highlights the systemic issues within segregated neighborhoods where the education system often prioritizes job training over holistic development, reinforcing racial inequities instead of fostering an inclusive society that values every child's unique capabilities.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of equitable education for all children.
A great deal has been written in recent years about the purported lack of motivation in the children of the Negro ghettos. Little in my experience supports this, yet the phrase has been repeated endlessly, and the blame in almost all cases is placed somewhere outside the classroom.
Schooling should not be left to the whim or wealth of village elders. I believe that we should fund all schools in the U.S. with our national resources. All these kids are being educated to be Americans, not citizens of Minneapolis or San Francisco.
An awful lot of people come to college with this strange idea that there's no longer segregation in America's schools, that our schools are basically equal; neither of these things is true.
Hypersegregated inner-city schools - in which one finds no more than five or ten white children, at the very most, within a student population of as many as 3,000 - are the norm, not the exception, in most northern urban areas today.
I wrote the first book, and I thought people would say: 'Separate and unequal schools in the City of Boston? I didn't know that. Let's go out and fix it.'
The trouble is not that schools don't work; they do. They're excellent machines for achieving historically accepted purposes. In suburban schools are children of the rich, who grow up to privilege and anesthetic oblivion to pain - and who then use the servants produced by ghetto schools.
Education is transformational. It changes lives. That is why people work so hard to become educated and why education has always been the key to the American Dream, the force that erases arbitrary divisions of race and class and culture and unlocks every person's God-given potential.
Education doesn't need to be reformed- it needs to be transformed.
I can remember only a few of the strange and curious words now dead but living and spoken by the English people a thousand years ago.
My eighth grade teacher, Mrs. Pabst, had done her master's thesis on Tolkien. She showed me how the trilogy was patterned after Norse mythology. She was also the first person to encourage me to submit stories for publication. The idea of writing a fantasy based on myths never left me, and many years later, this would lead me to write Percy Jackson.
The giving of love is an education in itself.
You are at some point exposed to a wonderful story, and you really want to know what happens next, so you learn to read in order to find out.
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