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.
Interpretation
The quote challenges the notion that children from disadvantaged backgrounds lack motivation, suggesting that external factors, rather than the children themselves, are often blamed.
Jonathan Kozol's quote reflects on the common narrative surrounding children from impoverished neighborhoods, specifically those within Negro ghettos, which posits that they lack motivation. Kozol argues that this narrative is misleading and that it is often used to deflect responsibility away from the educational system and societal structures that contribute to these children's circumstances. By suggesting that the blame is misplaced, he calls for a deeper examination of the systemic issues at play rather than accepting superficial explanations.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about educational reform and the challenges faced by students from underprivileged backgrounds.
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.
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.
History has proven that each generation of Howard graduates will forge the way forward for our country and our world.
The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn when teachers themselves are taught to learn.
Feeling gratitude isn't born in us-it's something we are taught, and in turn, we teach our children.
Education in the true sense, of course, is an enablement to serve-both the living human community in its natural household or neighborhood and the precious cultural possessions that the living community inherits or should inherit.
Besides language and music, it [mathematics] is one of the primary manifestations of the free creative power of the human mind, and it is the universal organ for world understanding through theoretical construction. Mathematics must therefore remain an essential element of the knowledge and abilities which we have to teach, of the culture we have to transmit, to the next generation.
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.