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.'
Interpretation
This quote reflects the author's hope that awareness of educational inequalities would inspire action for change.
Jonathan Kozol expresses a desire for readers to recognize the stark disparities in educational opportunities within Boston's schools. He believed that once people were made aware of these 'separate and unequal' conditions, they would be motivated to take corrective action to address these injustices.
In practice
In a speech on educational reform, one might say, 'As Jonathan Kozol pointed out, we must recognize the unequal schools in our city and work towards fixing them.'
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.
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.
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.
A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.
Unfortunately, kids are led to believe things are easier to achieve than they really are.
It is essential to rear a generation at the very top of society that has all the qualities needed to lead and give the people the inspiration and the drive to make it succeed. In short, the elite.. Every society tries to produce this type. The British have special schools for them: the gifted and talented are sent to Eton and Harrow.
An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
What a child does when not told what to do is the final indicator of what and who that child is.
Like our physical bodies, our memory becomes out of shape. As children, we are constantly learning new experiences, but by the time we reach our 20s, we start to lead a more sedentary life both mentally and physically. Our lives become routine, and we stop challenging our brains, and our memory starts to suffer.
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